


Here in the Dark

by Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor (orphan_account)



Category: Adam Lambert - Fandom
Genre: Community: glam_kink, Glam Rock, Glamnation Tour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 33,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy doesn't want to see what the light can show him. It's too much, too fast. But he's got to get there sometime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written almost three years ago, in realtime as Adam was on tour, for a prompt on glam_kink: "Tommy will have sex with Adam, but only in the dark." It was supposed to be a teeny little short thing and, well, we see how THAT went.
> 
> I edited this fic once in 2010 and am doing a second edit now putting it up on AO3. If you've read it before, I encourage you to read it again; I think I've grown a lot as an author in that time, and while the meat of the story is the same, there are changes.
> 
> Enjoy!

It starts in the middle of August.

It's just a stage kiss, yeah, but Adam has this thing about not really kissing someone if he can't mean it, even if it's just some kind of energy-sharing thing (and Tommy would have to admit he totally stopped paying attention when Adam started going on about chi and tantra and whatever other kooky stuff he has stored in his brain, just nodding and pretending to pay attention), and so Tommy wasn't expecting Bethlehem at all. It's a short kiss, but it's open and inviting and there's the barest flicker of Adam's tongue against Tommy's lower lip before Adam pulls back, intimate and somehow sweet, nothing like the let's-see-how-loud-we-can-make-them-scream licks and openmouthed, just-for-show kisses that normally fill this space in the lyrics, and all Tommy can think is _what the actual fuck?_ because there's grabbing, and there's play-flirting, and then there's this, and this is definitely not those.

Adam flees to the buses after the show before Tommy can find him and ask what that was all about, because Adam never does anything without a good reason, it's practically some kind of law, and when Tommy tries to follow he finds himself blocked by Monte.

"Just let him go, man," Monte advises, and for a second Tommy could gladly hit him. “It'll just make things worse.”

“Yeah, because telling him I don't care is going to make things worse when he's embarrassed as _fuck_ ,” Tommy snaps, and that all by itself is reason for him to want to go to Adam, sit on his bed, bring a gift of beer or playing cards or plain old quiet companionship, hug him and tell him it's okay. Adam doesn't _get_ embarrassed. After the one time that ended with Adam and Brooke mostly naked chasing each other through the dressing room with a hanger in Brooke's hand and a single shoe in Adam's (Tommy still doesn't know why and isn't entirely sure he wants to know), when Tommy wanted to be embarrassed for him and then realised there was no point, the idea of Adam being flustered by anything is absolutely alien. Now he's seen Adam embarrassed, and he doesn't like it, wants to fix it, and Monte's just shaking his head no.

“Go for it," he says. "Fuck him up for the night, probably the rest of the week. That what you want? It's sure as hell not what I want."

"What—" But Tommy hasn't even thought the whole question before he knows the answer. 

Adam wasn't acting. 

Adam was using the choreography as an outlet for something he won't actually say aloud offstage, where it might mean something even Adam doesn't dare it to mean, where it could turn into something Adam, that self-professed control freak with a smile, couldn't contain. 

_We both know it isn't time, but would you be mine?_

Monte must see comprehension dawning, because he finally drops his arm. Tommy drags him off to one side, where even Neil—who makes it his business to know pretty much every single thing said about Adam so he can be rumour control, if he has to be—won't hear them.

“Are you going?”

“Of course I'm going. But you're a bad idea right now.”

Tommy digs his fingers into the material of Monte's shirt to hold him in place. “Listen. If he feels like talking, tell him I told you I didn't care—you know. I mean, it didn't bother me. Not that I don't care about _him_ —you're his friend, _you_ know,” he finally manages, pretty sure he sounds like he's making excuses and hating it because he shouldn't have to make excuses, this should be easy, but it's not, and shit, it'd be easier if he didn't have to think about Adam's lips on his or about what kind of message he sent by kissing back just a little, not just playing along but actually answering Adam's touch with one of his own. "And, dude. Let me know what the fuck is going on."

"I will." And off he goes, slipping deftly past a crowd of fangirls and into Adam's bus.

Monte doesn't come back to the crew bus that night, but around four in the morning Tommy gets a text.

_hes ok sleeping now_

Tommy tries not to think about what it means that it bothered him enough to stay awake until he knew for sure, when Monte's presence on Adam's bus pretty much rules out Adam doing something stupid by default (not that Adam's the kind who solves his problems that way, Tommy's only known him for nine months but he remembers when they thought the AMAs might have blown everything and if Adam could get through that okay he can get through fucking _anything_ ), because he'll have to ask himself enough of those questions tomorrow, and he can't deal with them twice. 

He rolls over in the dark and puts his phone away, shoves his pillow around until he's got it the way he wants, closes his eyes. 

Wills himself to sleep without thinking. Without dreaming.

He mostly succeeds.

\-----------

Tommy manages to hide himself on Adam's bus the next day, thinking to himself that it'll be a joke on him if the crew decides to join Adam or if Neil pops over for a visit or if Adam goes to one of their buses, but no, it's just Adam, staring concernedly at his phone and flopping onto one of the seats with a throw pillow against his stomach before he even realises Tommy's there. Then he looks petrified. 

Tommy tries to ease things up by smiling. It feels fake, probably because it _is_ fake, he's just as scared as Adam looks, but the mental image of Adam slinking away from him onstage instead of embracing him and ruffling his hair, keeping his distance instead of being up in Tommy's face and ready to touch and play--whether it'd be accurate or not, Tommy doesn't know and doesn't really give a shit--keeps him moving forward.

“Hey,” he finally says, and when Adam's answering greeting is quiet, the voice of someone who just wants to disappear, Tommy knows his first plan—pretending he came to chitchat and working what he has to say into the conversation—needs to be scrapped, pronto. There's no small-talking with the expression on Adam's face. “Hey, about last night—“

“I'm sorry,” Adam spits out, and Tommy can see panic rising. “I don't know what got into me, I really need to not get so caught up like that—“

And because hearing Adam try to make excuses is so painful, doubly so because he never does it so he's stupidly bad at it, Tommy leans forward and puts a finger on Adam's lips.

“It's okay,” he says, and when Adam's eyes meet his he feels completely and totally naked, not the good kind of naked where two people totally connect with each other but the bad kind where you're the skinny kid in the middle of a changing room full of jocks, and Adam must see it because the fear in his own eyes softens. “I told you last November it was okay. That's why we've been messing around during the show before now.”

“And I really overstepped my boundaries last November, Tommy,” Adam protests. “I don't regret doing it on TV because _somebody_ had to, but I didn't have any right—“

“Did you miss the part where I said _it's okay_?” Tommy asks, trying to give Adam an irritated look. He's seen the phrase “Adumb” pop up on Twitter a few times, and yeah, at times like this he totally gets where it comes from. “You gave them what they wanted.” And this is the part that scares him in some desperate fundamental way he doesn't quite get because he's talked to Adam about this before, by their age he's pretty sure you should _know_ , but it has to be said. “It—I mean, if you wanted to do it again . . . I'd be okay with that too.” Adam glances up at him, and Tommy lets himself grin. This time it doesn't feel as fake.

“They already think we're fucking anyway. Come on, it'll be funny to watch them go nuts when it looks more real and we're not playing it up like a couple of porn stars.” Tommy feels his finger creeping toward his mouth and forces himself not to chew on it. “And . . . uh . . . “

He ends up just spitting out as much as he can— _if you want to try, you know, offstage_ —and then being really fucking grateful when Adam gets it, gets it and kind of smiles a little, kind of shy like they're sixteen and haven't even popped the asking-someone-out cherry (which makes Tommy feel better about not really knowing what to call I'm-not-sure-if-I'm-straight-or-not-anymore-fuck-you-very-much-Adam dating kind of stuff, at least), and holds out a hand for Tommy to take and it's so fucking _chick flick_ Tommy can't help smiling when he takes it, like they're a pair of high-schoolers instead of, well, Adam's the rockstar and Tommy's just the bassist, but they're big enough to play on television and have their names in the paper, and it's kind of weird but good to know it's still okay to be awkward, in a way where they're both so awkward it kind of comes back around to being un-awkward because apparently they're going to be figuring this whole thing out together.

Monte comes after them at the next rest stop, probably afraid Tommy's left Adam a sobbing wreck on the floor of the bus, and when Tommy wakes up peering up into Monte's face he has to blink twice before he remembers why he's on Adam's bus with Adam's arms around his waist and Adam's head nuzzled against his shoulder, like he's some kind of giant golden retriever puppy. 

“I hope you know what you're getting into,” is Monte's only comment. “We have twenty minutes here.”

“I do,” Tommy says, thinking of the long conversation they had with their hands linked on the seat between them before too many nights with too little sleep and the rhythm of the highway conspired to overtake them both.

He doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I wanna kiss you,  
>  but if I do then I might miss you, babe  
> It's complicated and stupid  
> Got my ass squeezed by sexy Cupid  
> Guess he wants to play, wants to play  
> A lovegame, a lovegame_
> 
> _Hold me and love me  
>  Just wanna touch you for a minute  
> Maybe three seconds is enough  
> For my heart to quit it_
> 
> \--"[Lovegame](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKeoEGHo3MY)," Lady Gaga

They punk the _shit_ out of the crowd in Providence, and Tommy doesn't know how he doesn't piss himself laughing when Adam makes a stern face at the crowd and tells them if he sees anybody with their mouths shut he's going to have to kiss them, because Tommy knows what's coming, Adam confessed on the road out of Bethlehem that he had this idea but wouldn't go through with it if Tommy didn't give him the okay. Tommy said yes, of course, because what he won't admit is that if everyone else thinks it's so hot to watch him and Adam kiss he wants to know what it looks like. And then there was that kiss when Adam introduced him, possibly the best prank since fanservice was invented, and prank or not Tommy was ready to melt right through the stage—and oh yeah, he could totally live with being kissed like that more often. Yes, Tommy likes girls and Tommy also likes that. Tommy also likes that a _lot_.

The entire crew piles onto Adam's bus to celebrate another successful show, and when Tommy has a couple of beers in him he curls up by Adam's side and snuggles against him, leaning up to kiss his cheek because yeah, okay, it's a little more clingy than they used to be but it's not the scary as hell roller-coaster he thought it was going to be, at least until Adam tells the group the truth when Sasha laughs at them and asks: no, Tommy isn't drunk; they're trying it, Tommy Joe Ratliff the straight bassist is perhaps not so straight, and suddenly Tommy thinks maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

Then Longineu grins at him. “Hey, Tommy, does this mean I can have your bunk? Getting off the bottom would fucking _rock_.”

“I—“ And Tommy wants to make some snappy comeback, but fuck you very much, Longineu, Tommy can't think past the mental images of a pair of bodies fit together in certain ways, the accompanying mental audio of what Adam might sound like speaking certain words into Tommy's ear, and now this whole thing _really_ seems like a bad idea. Then Adam wraps his arms around Tommy's waist.

“Screw off, LP, it's only been two days,” Adam says. “Unless you're implying I'm easy.”

Monte reaches for his beer. “I'm just going on the record here to say he doesn't have to imply it.”

Brooke starts coughing, trying to laugh and swallow beer at the same time. Taylor whacks her on the back and then collapses against her shoulder. The entire bus is laughing, in fact, even Adam, when he lets go of Tommy's waist to find one of the throw pillows scattered all over so he can smack Monte with it. Tommy has the feeling he should probably say something to defend Adam's wounded honour, or some shit like that, but all he can do is watch as a pillow fight ensues and be glad he doesn't have to get involved in it. Eventually Sasha plunks down next to him while Adam and Brooke laugh and pelt each other, and she challenges Tommy to poker and he realises halfway through calling a raise that maybe not so much changed. They're still all family, and a lot of the crew have been Adam's friends forever; they're probably used to his drunken ramblings about self-discovery and learning and shit. If anything, Tommy thinks, he'll be subject to a lot of catcalls and sly winks, and okay, he can live with that.

Three rest stops later everybody's wandered back to the other bus to sleep, and it's just Adam and Tommy nuzzling sleepily in the back and, yeah, okay, making out a little, slow and sweet.

“You were amazing tonight,” Adam says during a break in the kissing, and Tommy shakes his head. 

“ _You_ were amazing, I was just—“

“Helping me explode the Internet,” Adam cuts in, grinning, and then there's a brief pause in the conversation while Tommy demonstrates how they were exploding the Internet, and yeah, he could definitely get used to this.

Then Adam pulls Tommy into his lap, and that's when the sleepy sweetness of the whole thing explodes because yeah, okay, they've been making out, Adam's human, shit just happens when you have a dick and there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it, Tommy knows all that but when he feels Adam's cock pressing against him he still panics. He knew when he said yes that he was talking about dating a guy, but there's a difference somehow between knowing and, you know, _knowing_ it, and the unvarnished reality literally just poked him in the ass. 

Adam pulls back when Tommy panics before Tommy can say a word; he just knows, and stops.

“You okay?”

Tommy looks up at him, and there's nothing feminine or softened about that face now with the makeup gone and the hairspray brushed out, carefully formulated androgyny tossed aside for comfort, and it's a handsome face but it's very undeniably a _man's_ face and Tommy's pretty sure if his heart keeps beating this hard it's going to bruise against his ribs. Adam strokes Tommy's hair out of his face, and when he shifts to pull their bodies apart Tommy feels like the world's greatest jackass, but—

“Not ready?” Adam murmurs, and Tommy wants to tell him it was just kind of a shock and he's cool, but he can't make his mouth form the words—he just nods and looks down at the absolutely fascinating cuff on his hoodie until Adam takes his hands. “You know, it's okay,” he says, and behind the assurance Tommy can hear regret and wants to scream. They haven't been—whatever—for nine months, but after everything they've been through together it shouldn't be such a _big fucking deal_ , and finally Tommy lunges forward and kisses Adam again, not with any kind of technique but just lips and teeth and tongue, runs his hands under Adam's shirt against his waistband up his shoulders over his sides, and when Adam tries to pull away again Tommy pushes himself closer, because this is just fucking _embarrassing_ , damn it, he said he wanted to try and here he is chickening out already—

Adam puts his hands on Tommy's shoulders and _pushes_ him back, and Tommy looks up at him, confused because this was the point, wasn't it? And then Adam shakes his head.

“Let me tell you something I learned the first time I had sex,” Adam says. “It won't work if you're freaking out and just trying to prove something. I don't mean it'll just be bad and you get over it, I mean it's bad and it _doesn't happen_. And you can get really hurt if you're not relaxed and you try to force it. It sucks balls. And not in the good way.” 

It's a stupid enough joke that Tommy can't help snorting and then laughing. Adam pulls Tommy back into his arms, into one of those warm, all-encompassing hugs that while Tommy's in them make the entire world seem irrelevant because he's sharing air and space—okay, and energy or chi or whatever the fuck it is Adam calls it—with someone who seems not just uncomprehending of hate but incapable of feeling it, and yeah, that's a pretty good place to be, held by somebody who's all the good things in the world wrapped up in a single package, who practically radiates those good things in an almost visible glow, and as he thinks it Tommy wonders if it's possible to be in love with someone without wanting to fuck them and then Adam's nuzzling his neck before Tommy can start panicking again about the clusterfuck his love life is turning into.

“Next rest stop should be coming up soon,” Adam says, and Tommy nods. They'll stop if Tommy says he wants to swap buses, but otherwise they're going to be going from now til dawn. Tommy wages a fierce debate between himself and himself and finally reaches, tentatively, for Adam's hand, to lace their fingers together.

“Uh—“

“I've got a shirt you can borrow if you want to stay here,” Adam tells him, and after more internal argument Tommy nods.

He changes in the little bathroom that's at least bigger than a plane bathroom (good fucking luck changing in one of _those_ , Tommy thinks), then comes back to Adam's bed to find him already burrowed under the covers and most of the way asleep. Tommy slides under the covers, and Adam wraps an arm around his waist with a tired but contented sigh, smoothing the T-shirt absently over Tommy's leg to make sure he's covered. Adam's not hard anymore, and some part of Tommy can't help wondering if he was jerking off while Tommy was in the bathroom. Then he decides he's not going to think about it, he's just going to snuggle into Adam's side and be held, because holding is good, and so is the goodnight kiss Adam gives him, the one Tommy returns that involves a lot of nuzzling and yeah, Tommy can feel the affection being shared with him not just in Adam's skin but all around them, so maybe Adam's onto something with his feng shui stuff.

It's the simplest things are going to be for a long time, and as Tommy drifts into sleep he relishes it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Cold late night so long ago  
>  When I was not so strong you know  
> A pretty man came to me  
> Never seen eyes so blue  
> You know I could not run away, it seemed  
> We'd seen each other in a dream  
> It seemed like he knew me  
> He looked right through me, yeah_
> 
> \--"[Magic Man](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh5MYjNTUeA)," Heart

It's sometime about two weeks later that Tommy can't get the bugs out from under his skin.

Logically, of course, he knows nothing is there, and it's not the DTs, because he hasn't been drinking or drugging. It's just a _buzz_ , something under his skin that won't go away, crawling and making him want to itch, and finally as he watches Neil chase Adam through backstage with a soaked and useless T-shirt in hand, Neil pissed and Adam laughing his ass off with that gorgeous sparkle in his eyes, Tommy figures it out: he's horny. Not just a little, either.

Neil catches up to Adam, and in the ensuing scuffle manages to pull off Adam's T-shirt with some kind of weird half-headlock, half-embrace and a single quick jerk. Tommy's entranced by the freshly-exposed freckles down Adam's back as Neil pulls Adam's shirt on over his own head and says something about teaching Adam to stick his thumb over the spigot, and Adam's still laughing like hell and Tommy's pretty sure he's going to get hard if he watches much more of this, Adam's bare back moving all its little underskin parts in a single unified whole over a pair of beat-up blue jeans and _yeah_ , Adam may not be a girl but that's fucking _sexy_.

"Go ahead, wear it, I'd like to see you get mobbed by fangirls who think you're me," Adam says, and then he stretches his arms over his head, the muscles all down his back moving beneath his skin and bringing the edges of his shoulderblades into smooth, rounded relief like tiny wings, and Tommy reaches over to pull his stage shirt into his lap. If someone sits down next to him, it'll wrinkle like fuck. Of course. "I need to go get dressed anyway."

Tommy's okay until they're onstage and Adam nearly skates right by him in "Fever," maybe Tommy's just spoiled but Adam's denying him his nightly treat, and then they kiss and Tommy thinks maybe he should have trusted Adam's judgement because he's instantly hard, he's had moments before onstage when he really got into it and got a little hot but this is fucking _intense_ , and he's so fucking happy to get offstage during the acoustic set. There's no guaranteed privacy anywhere, but he can wash his hands and face in cold water and sit in the wings with his eyes closed and listen and let all those high, slow notes take him down to a simmer instead of a full boil.

There's a tap on his shoulder, and Tommy opens his eyes to see Neil in a gigantic headset and Adam's T-shirt, looking annoyed as usual. Tommy's starting to wonder how Neil can be so damned funny and what Adam would probably call sweet when he's in off-hours, and so pissed off as soon as they hit a venue. Neil flips up the mic on the headset and leans over to speak into Tommy's ear.

"There's an issue with the girls' clothes," he says. "Dressers are with their stuff right now and there's nobody in Adam's room. We've gotta get him changed." 

"I'm on during the break," Tommy answers, and Neil shakes his head.

"Not tonight, you're not. I already called Monte's earset. He's filling and I need you in Adam's room because you see him in this shit way more often than I do." 

Adam comes sprinting in thirty seconds after Neil and Tommy, already out of his shirt and springing his necklace with a single hand. Neil grabs the shirt and tosses it in the hamper, and then Adam blinks at him.

"Neil?" 

"Mallory's got an issue with the dancers," Neil says, and takes the next shirt from Tommy. "I think somebody's missing a pair of pants or something. Arms up." 

Adam obeys, but he's cursing as he does. Tommy taps his left foot, and Adam puts a hand on the wall to raise it so Tommy can slide on socks while Neil and Adam wrestle with the lace-ups. Finally Neil hooks his hands into the waistband and yanks, leaving little pink marks all down Adam's thighs that look like they should hurt, but apparently neither of them cares. "Are they—"

"They'll be okay. Chill. Touch up your face. Tommy, get out of my way." Neil grabs the pants. "Find some, shit, lip gloss? What are you wearing tonight?" 

Tommy goes scrabbling while Neil helps Adam shrug into his coat. He finally identifies the right tube and it's his turn to tell Neil to move his ass. Adam opens his mouth, and Tommy fixes the gloss while trying not to think about how weird it is to see Adam so totally pliant, obedient—

"Grab his other boot, we've got like thirty seconds here!" Neil yells, and Tommy picks up Adam's foot to slide it into the boot before they go running together back into the wings. 

"Thanks," Adam murmurs, while they watch Monte and LP finish up what they've thrown together, and Tommy nods.

"Never thought I'd see Neil bossing you instead of the other way around," he whispers back, and Adam chuckles.

"Backstage rules," Adam tells him. "Quick-change dresser is always right. Break a leg," he adds, and pecks Tommy's cheek--just long enough for a full press of lips instead of a token pass through air--before hurrying off to his mark.

 _Fuck you_ very _much, Adam_ , Tommy thinks. He was _almost_ rid of that hardon.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Looking in your eyes tonight  
>  I can see everything I need  
> Holding your heart close to mine  
> Feeling you, breathing you, my love  
> We melt together, two become as one  
> Night is burning hotter than the sun  
> When I'm with you, when I'm with you_
> 
> _I could drown in your eyes, die in your arms  
>  Live for these moments here in the dark  
> I don't know where I end, I'm not sure where you start  
> When we're body to body, heart to heart_
> 
> \--"[Body to Body, Heart to Heart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MULQEPchcs)," Cher

He's waiting in Adam's bus when they finish the night, he can't fucking help it, all he can see is Adam opening his mouth and waiting for a gloss brush—

"Fucking _sound_ ," Adam snarls, and Tommy opens his eyes and looks up. Adam blinks at him in surprise.

"Tommy?"

"Do you have any plans tonight?" Tommy spits out, and he _knows_ his voice is off-kilter, he can see it in Adam's face when Adam looks at him, but he can't bring himself to care.

"Shower and bed," Adam answers, and then he scrubs at the back of his neck. "Why? You okay?"

And yes, Tommy's okay, except for the hormones that won't leave him the fuck alone, the ones that keep bringing up the image of Adam's bare, freckled back, trying to juxtapose it with that open, waiting mouth, but just thinking about the kind of sweetness that asks that question—about Adam tired and sweaty but willing to put off sleep and cleanliness to make sure Tommy is okay—is enough to send Tommy into a fresh wave of heavy desire.

"I'm okay," he says, but he must not look it, because instead of nodding and heading to the shower Adam sits down.

"You look—" Adam pauses, and in the pause Tommy leans forward and kisses him, long, hard, arm around Adam's waist, hand on his neck. He finally lets go, but he can tell looking in Adam's eyes that Adam knows exactly what's going on.

"Okay?" Tommy finally asks, and after a moment of studying Tommy's face Adam nods.

"Let me shower, I have glitter trying to climb my ass," Adam tells him, and Tommy snickers and kisses him again, and yeah, okay, this is way easier than it seemed just a couple of weeks ago, and maybe all he needed was time to adjust to Adam's greater height and bulk and the particular way he kisses before taking the next step.

It stays easy until he's been curled up on Adam's bed for about five minutes, and by the time Adam comes in still towelling his hair dry Tommy is wondering if he should have gone back to the crew bus and spent a little extra time in their shower, instead.

Adam sits down next to him, gathers Tommy into his arms, cuddles him, turns his head to speak into Tommy's ear. "You just wanna jerk off, or do you want to actually--"

"I want to actually," Tommy interrupts. "I wanna fuck you, jesus, do you have any fucking idea what it was like trying to be cool up there all night when--"

This time Adam interrupts, with a kiss. "I don't like being fucked, definitely not the first time," he murmurs. "But if you want, I'll fuck you."

"Lights out," Tommy answers, and he can feel Adam's confusion, but if they're going to then yeah, that's how it's going to be, in the dark. Tommy wants—god, he wants—but if they're back to front he'll be looking down at a man's hands and a man's bed and if they're face to face he'll be looking up into the face of a man who's much bigger than him and maybe Adam's gotten past the stereotype bullshit enough to be comfortable in that position, but Adam's also got ten years' experience on Tommy. At last he hears Adam murmur assent, and Tommy clicks off the overhead.

Tommy's focused on his breathing, trying not to freak out, because he _asked_ for this, his cock is practically screaming for it, and Adam's hands are gentle when he pulls Tommy's shirt over his head, but Tommy keeps hearing locker-room rumours (mostly from guys more talk than walk, probably, but who the fuck could tell? And does it matter?) in the back of his head about girls who always seemed to be absent the day those stories spread, about what happened to certain girls who did certain things, and those memories are enough to make his heart pound hard enough to hurt.

"Calm down," he hears Adam murmur into his ear, and Tommy tries to force himself to slow his breathing. One of Adam's hands bumps his cheek, then slides into his hair and strokes. Tommy shuts his eyes and lets out a long breath.

"Is this going to hurt?"

"Do you want it to?" Adam nuzzles around until he finds Tommy's neck and kisses it, and in spite of himself Tommy relaxes just a little.

"Not really."

"Okay," Adam says, and Tommy hears a whisper of denim and then their naked legs are tangled together on the bed. "Then it won't."

Tommy measures the time by his breathing, because with the blackout curtains pulled it's just that, _black_ , and in two breaths he hears the drawer of Adam's nightstand open and in another three he feels fingers where fingers don't belong, rubbing, coaxing, Adam pressing gentle kisses to every bit of Tommy he can reach, and finally Tommy spreads his legs a little, relaxing back into Adam's pillows while Adam kisses his thighs and pushes fingers slow and hot inside him, murmuring quiet encouragement and little endearments that should probably make Tommy feel embarrassed but somehow, coming out of Adam, don't. 

It _doesn't_ hurt, not when Adam's fingers are in him or when he pulls back and murmurs for Tommy to turn over, but he must feel some kind of tenseness in Tommy because before he does anything else he finds Tommy's spine and kisses down it, presses himself against Tommy in the dark and kisses his neck shoulders back nuzzles in his hair, murmurs quietly into Tommy's ear and it's not until then that Adam pushes in, slipslide of latex against lube-slicked skin, hand curling around Tommy's waist and stroking the skin below his navel before sliding just a little lower, voice soft and sweet as he whispers into Tommy's ear between breaths, not teasing or calling him pretty kitty or asking how he likes it but instead murmuring about how good it feels to hold him, telling him his hair smells good (and that, Tommy thinks, is one of the most fucked-up and simultaneously awesome compliments he's ever gotten, doubly so on both counts during sex), asking if he's okay, Adam's hips rolling against his ass and Adam's chest pressed against his back, slow and gentle, manoeuvring Tommy gently through a series of motions that bring them closer together and apart and together again, and okay, it's not exactly normal but it's not bad, either.

Adam's mostly quiet outside of those encouraging, lovey little murmurs, and as Adam finds Tommy's head in the dark and turns it to kiss him—and that's gentle too, parted lips wordlessly asking permission before diving in—Tommy thinks it's kind of weird, Adam all talked out or something, not chattering like he usually does but just letting his hands and lips and hips do all the talking for him, and as the bus speeds its way down an anonymous highway in the middle of the night Tommy finally lets a quiet moan slip out of his mouth, combination of the desire he's felt all day and Adam's warmth above and around him. Adam chuckles against his lips and shifts, and Tommy gasps into his mouth, because yeah, that's good, whatever Adam did is _really fucking good_ and as Adam's hand strokes him from below Tommy finally gives up, rides the wave, and collapses into Adam's arms.

Adam must come at some point too, because when he spoons up against Tommy's back he's not hard and the condom is gone, but if it happened on Tommy's watch then he missed it. Adam snuggles against him, arms around Tommy's waist and forehead nestled against the back of Tommy's neck, like Tommy's some kind of giant teddy bear. "I love you," he says, and it's so easy, so natural, Tommy can't even find it in himself to tense. He just asks.

"Why?"

Adam shifts and snuggles closer. "Because you're funny," he answers, and there's not even a pause to think first. "Because you're smart. You're not afraid to take chances. You go for what you want without being a dick about it. You're nice to people even after they've been jackasses to you. That's worth a lot." He kisses Tommy's shoulder. "You're my friend and you're not afraid to see if maybe there can be more to it than that. Want me to keep going?"

"Save the rest for some other time when I need my ego fluffed," Tommy says, and Adam's answering chuckle, a low rumble in his belly that Tommy feels all down his spine, is music all by itself. Tommy relaxes into Adam's arms; this is familiar, known, maybe not "normal" for people who don't have Adam as a friend but taken as a matter of course by those who spend their days and nights with him. When Tommy's dad died this is where Tommy spent his first night, bawling on Adam's bus with a blanket wrapped around him and Adam stroking his hair and quietly humming a weird but comforting mix of lullabyes and Michael Jackson and (Tommy thinks) the soundtrack to some old Jim Henson movie to soothe him enough to sleep, and if this can be a safe place when Tommy's been torn into a thousand little pieces everybody else had to help him put back together, there's no reason it can't be a safe place now, when there's nothing to traumatise him but his own fucking insecurities.

"You're amazing," Adam mumbles, already half-asleep, into Tommy's hair. Tommy cuddles backward, knowing he's going to regret it in the morning when they both wake up naked and not caring, at least for now.

Later in the night he'll fish his clothes out of the covers and get back into his shorts, at least, but for now there's just Adam's breathing and the steady rumble of wheels on pavement, and Tommy likes that just fine.

For now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chill out, what you yellin' for?  
> Lay back, it's all been done before  
> And if, you could only let it be  
> You will see
> 
> I like you the way you are  
> When we're drivin' in your car  
> And you're talkin' to me one on one  
> But you become somebody else   
> 'Round everyone else, watchin' your back  
> Like you can't relax
> 
> \--"[Complicated](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6PfrFoa30U)," Avril Lavigne

Tommy's pretty sure Adam talked to the crew about teasing him, because in the next two weeks Tommy doesn't hear a word from any of them. It should probably make him nervous, but it doesn't; he's just grateful he's not being asked to answer any awkward questions, especially when he gravitates back to the crew bus for three days, feeling the need for some space. He's not quite sure what to do with the memory of Adam snuggled around him like he was born to fit into that specific pair of arms.

Then Longineu leaves and Isaac joins up, understandably a little freaked out by the tight show logistics and even, Tommy thinks, a little freaked by Adam's crazy enthusiasm. Tommy invites him for a several-hour vacation on Elm Street on the bus between cities, and in between shouting at the girls to not have sex and demolishing several too many bags of popcorn, they talk about Isaac's family and Tommy's old job and gigs they've both had, and eventually that leads to Tommy trying to reassure Isaac that he hasn't signed onto a total crazyhouse.

"You guys are awesome," Isaac protests. "I've just . . . never played for crowds this big before."

"Me either," Tommy says. "None of us have except Adam, and he told me in bed the other night—"

Tommy freezes, and Isaac hits pause and glances away from the TV screen. "He told you what?"

Tommy decides if Isaac's going to act like he didn't say it, he'll play along. "Most of these crowds are huge even for him, and he did the Idol tour. We're pretty much all first-timers."

Isaac smiles and hits play on the remote. "You guys never seem to get stage fright or anything, though."

Tommy can't help it—he laughs. "I don't really 'cause you have to think too hard about your chords to get scared, but I thought Adam was gonna pass out backstage at the AMAs. I had bruises the next day where he was holding my hand."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously." Tommy holds out his hand, as though the bruises should still be visible, instead of being a long-faded ghost shaped around the outlines of Adam's thumb and fingers. "I had to stretch my hand before I could play. Hurt like hell."

Isaac's mouth twitches. "Was that what that was all about? Kissing it better?"

It takes Tommy a second. Then he snorts laughter, trying not to feel uneasy. The AMAs are old ground; they have nothing to do with what's going on now. "He doesn't know. Adam's got this thing about hurting people even if it's by accident and I . . . " He shrugs. "Just never really saw a reason to tell him."

Isaac nods and returns his attention to the movie. "Hey, don't light him on fire—!" He sighs. "You ever notice you can see a movie a thousand times—"

"—and still hope it's got a different ending," Tommy finishes. "Only every time someone makes me watch that shitty _House on Haunted Hill_ remake. They just don't make them like Hitchcock anymore."

The bus comes to a stop, and as the car on the screen takes off in a cloud of teenage screams Adam pokes his head in. 

"Glitter?" he asks, and Tommy raises his eyebrows.

"Adam, you don't need glitter for an _interview_."

"No, but I _want_ glitter for this interview and I don't know where Sutan's stuff is."

"And you don't have any in your makeup bag?"

"No?"

Tommy sighs and rolls his eyes and heaves himself off the couch, finding his bag in stowage and rummaging through it. "You seriously stopped the buses to get glitter?"

"No, we stopped because Ernie had to take a piss and you can't drive and use the bus bathroom at the same time," Adam answers. "If we'd stopped when I needed glitter you would've been bitching because I interrupted your torrid affair with—" he glances at the screen. "Jason Vorhees?"

"Freddy Krueger. And don't lie and tell me you're not busy having a torrid affair with Jack Dawson on your bus, because I'll call you a liar."

"You just don't know how to appreciate naked Leonardo DiCaprio," Adam says, sticking out his tongue and catching the glitter container when Tommy tosses it. "Even when you're the one who got the full-frontal nude to stare at. And I am not." He glances down at the glitter container, making a passing show at pretending to be embarrassed, but Tommy can see the smile twitching on the corners of his mouth. "I'm having a torrid affair with Johnny Depp and twelve hundred women. As long as I'm over here do you have that lip gloss you borrowed?"

"Don Juan whatever?" Tommy finds the gloss and walks it over. "That's worse than Titanic." 

"Admit it, you're just jealous because you didn't think to describe sex that way first."

"Admit it, you only like it because it's got Johnny Depp in a roleplay mask."

Adam flicks him off, but he's grinning when he does it. Tommy shakes his head and reboards the bus as Adam walks off, and Isaac hands him the remote to hit play on the next disc.

"So how long have you guys been together?"

 _Shit._

Tommy feels his fingers clench down on the remote. "We're not. I mean, we—I'm not—" But that's a coward's answer, a copout, a lie, and before he even says it he can see Adam's face in his mind, the way it would look if he found out Tommy just denied it all: the parted lips trembling on the edge of a question, the confused eyebrows. The eyes. Hurt in those brilliant blue eyes that sparkle like they've never seen hurt, maybe even tears. And Tommy takes a deep breath. "I'm not sure I'm ready to go there. We're just kind of . . . trying it out. You know, to see . . . ?"

"If you're bi?" 

"No, if—" Tommy looks down at the remote. "Yeah. If I'm bi. Or, you know," he says, hating himself a little but still clinging because he can't seem to help it, "straight with leanings. Kind of Adam in reverse."

"Cool," Isaac says, and reaches for another handful of popcorn. "He seems like he'd be a pretty cool boyfriend."

"He's an anal-retentive perfectionist who spent ten years getting his ass kicked by the world and still hasn't figured out that's supposed to hurt you," Tommy answers. "I don't—"

"And you're still trying it?" Isaac asks. Then he grins. "You've got a thing for him."

"I do not, I—" The buses pull in, and Adam scrambles in and drops two T-shirts and the remains of Tommy's glitter into Tommy's lap before his eyes flicker over to Isaac and back.

"Gotta go—see you at soundcheck—ask Monte to set up if I'm late, okay?—don't let the fans eat you—love you—bye!" he rattles off, and after a quick peck on Tommy's cheek he darts off the bus. Isaac raises an eyebrow.

"Hurricane Adam has reached the Florida coast," he comments, and Tommy laughs until his stomach is sore while Lisa pulls Nancy's diary out of the closet and does her recommended reading on Freddy Krueger. Then he looks back at the TV, and the smile disappears. Isaac glances over at him, then reaches for the remote in Tommy's hands and hits the stop button.

"You know, I get the feeling you're making this way harder than it needs to be," he remarks, and Tommy looks at him with the beginnings of a frown. "Do you like him, or don't you?"

"I just told you, I don't _know_ if I—"

"You said you don't know if you're bi," Isaac corrects. "I know people who've dated outside their orientation. Sometimes you just meet somebody who breaks all the boundaries you thought you had with a sledgehammer. So do you or don't you?"

"It's not that easy."

"I told you you're making it way harder than it needs to be. Take this and try actually listening to me, if the new kid on the block is allowed to be bossy." Isaac hands over a beer from the minifridge.

"If the new kid on the block has any good advice, the kid who's been around the block a few times has an ear for it." Tommy cracks the beer and drains a quarter of it at one go. Isaac cracks one of his own and takes a sip.

"Okay, I look at it like this," Isaac says. "If you were just talking about what he means to you with no sex attached—"

"In other words, if he's not Adam," Tommy interrupts. "That pretty much defeats the point."

Isaac offers him a dirty look. "If you were just talking about what he means to you with no _having sex_ attached," he amends. "Living in different places or one of you with a medical condition or something where having actual sex wasn't involved. Would you want to date him?"

Tommy thinks about playing dumb and telling Isaac that's nothing like the tour. Then he thinks about Adam before the AMAs, and the kind of scared, exhilarated smile Adam gave him before they went onstage; thinks about staring at his phone unable to breathe and finally pulling in a great whoosh of air that came out in a loud, spiralling scream that ended against Adam's shoulder, and Adam just stroking his hair and murmuring quiet, soothing sounds into Tommy's ear while Tommy started to bawl; thinks about some guy in a Tennessee bar taking offense to Tommy's makeup and Adam getting between them; thinks about a night on Adam's bus where Adam was the one crying, not over anything in particular but just homesick for friends and family he hadn't seen in months and it was Tommy holding Adam and mumbling quiet, half-articulate reassurances, instead of the other way around. And finally he nods.

"Yeah," he says, and the words are frightening but liberating at the same time. "Yeah. I think I would."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody nowhere holds the key to your heart  
> When love's a possession it'll tear you apart  
> You may have lovers wherever you roam  
> But sooner or later  
> We all sleep alone
> 
> \--"[We All Sleep Alone](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bypidUHzDM)," Cher

Tommy first gets the idea something's wrong during sound check, and finally he pulls Neil aside to ask what the hell is going on.

"Not a fucking clue," is Neil's answer. "He hasn't talked to me. Did you piss him off?"

"Not that I know of? I barely saw him all fucking day. Isaac and I spent the whole ride up here watching slasher flicks."

Comprehension rises on Neil's face. "That could be an issue."

"Me watching horror movies is an issue?"

"You watching horror movies with another guy and not inviting Adam is an issue, even if you didn't invite him because you knew he'd say no. He's got kind of a jealousy problem."

"I'm not giving up my right to friends just because he's got security issues," Tommy says. Neil shrugs.

"That's what happened with him and his first boyfriend," Neil answers. "He's mellowed out since then. But you should still talk to him."

"Fine," Tommy manages. "I will tell the big fucking diva rock star I am not his little bitch just because he's twice my size and pays my rent."

"And screws you," Neil adds. Tommy glares at him, and he shrugs. "Don't look at me that way. Adam only ever goes to the drugstore for one thing, and it's not cough syrup."

Adam calls him from the stage, and Tommy considers yelling back that he'll be just a minute, god, chill. Instead he rolls his eyes and heads for his bass. 

Wishing it were two weeks ago.

\-------------

There's no time to talk after soundcheck—Adam tells everyone he wants to crash for half an hour before he falls over, and it's Sasha who wakes him. Tommy's about to grab Adam and pull him aside before dinner, but before he can Adam gets shuffled down at one end of the table between Neil and Taylor and Tommy's stuck at the other between Terrance and Brooke, which he wouldn't normally mind if it didn't mean watching Adam spend the entire meal dropping comments into Taylor's personal space, and he's _not_ doing exactly what he's pissed off at Adam for doing. Really.

Tommy leaves before dessert, telling the rest of the group he's got a headache and all he wants for dessert is some ibuprofen, hoping it'll be enough to get Adam to follow him and knowing it won't be. He's got an ache, all right, but it's not in his head. It's in a part of his heart he didn't even know Adam touched.

He ends up on Adam's bus, curled up in Adam's bed, breathing in the smells of patchouli and Irish Spring and clean skin—Adam's smell, mixed with the faintest lingering bit of Tommy's own soap and aftershave, still clinging there from nights they've spent cuddling and talking, learning each other, feeling each other out. The buses move and Adam still doesn't come, and then Neil's businesslike series of raps sounds outside the door behind the blackout curtain.

"It's breakout time, Sleeping Beauty," he calls, and when Tommy appears Neil looks almost sympathetic. "He's already inside."

"Shit." Tommy rubs a hand over his face. "Maybe this is a bad idea."

Neil nods toward the door. "I lived with him for part of a summer when Mom and Dad were finalizing the divorce," he continues, and Tommy blinks a little in surprise. Every time he thinks he's gotten to the bottom of Adam, there's something new. "I didn't want to be there while all the shit was hitting the fan. So when summer vacation hit I hitched from San Diego to LA and stayed with him for two months. I cried like a fucking toddler the day he left on that cruise ship gig and put me on a bus home. He was the one sure thing I had that summer. When I had to go back to San Diego he called two or three times a week, but it wasn't the same." He steps off the last riser and locks the bus door. "That's when I learned even the most giving love you'll ever get isn't guaranteed. You've got to work to hold onto it and you can't hold it if you can't give something back. Nothing's really unconditional."

"So I should get used to him controlling my social life and just live with it because he says he loves me?" Tommy asks. The sarcasm isn't lost on Neil, who favours him with a dirty look.

"You should get used to the idea that if you go for it he's going to want to mother the _fuck_ out of you, and you'll both be happiest if you pick your battles. And that means figuring out where you can give but not letting him get away with shit, because in the long run he needs someone to kick his ass once in awhile."

"I thought that was your job."

Neil raises an eyebrow as he opens the stagedoor. "It is when he's being a diva about work. But him being a piss about his personal life is his boyfriend's problem, not mine."

And he walks in, and Tommy can't think of a damned thing to say. 

\----------------

They get through the set. There's that much to be thankful for. But Adam goes to his hotel room before Tommy can stop him, and finally Tommy decides he's not going to play Adam's games and heads off to his room, only to remember halfway down the hall with Isaac and Monte that his stuff is in Adam's room because they were supposed to celebrate the start of the international tour tonight and he has no room.

Tommy guesses it should be par for the course that the only person with an extra bed is Neil, and he should probably be grateful for it, except that as he's borrowing a T-shirt and bottoms from Taylor and running to the closest 24-hour Walgreens for a toothbrush all he can think of is that he _has_ stuff, and it's being held hostage by someone who's acting like a ten-year-old. He flumps moodily onto the extra bed—soft and not on a bus but too small and cold—and Neil looks up from _A People's History of the United States._

"And people say I'm the bitchy one," he comments, before looking back at his book. "I told you to talk to him."

"I tried, it's like trying to talk to a fucking brick wall," Tommy protests. He shoves the pillows around a bit to get comfortable and sulks inside his hoodie. "He's worse than a fucking toddler."

"He's probably not pissed at this point, you know," Neil says. "He's waiting for you to follow him."

"I'm not playing that kind of fucking mindgame," Tommy snips back. Neil shrugs.

"Some people need to know they're needed," he answers. "Adam's one of them. It's not that bad of a tradeoff if you really stop and think about it."

"Except I _don't_ need him. Not that way." No, not that way, in spite of the small, painful voice in his chest that suggests he shouldn't say that. Neil doesn't look away from his book, and Tommy decides to say "fuck it" and ask something he probably shouldn't. "Did he pull this shit on you when you were living with him?"

"All the time."

"What happened?"

Neil shrugs. "I'm here, aren't I?" He reaches for the coffee on the nightstand and takes a long swallow. Tommy watches the light glitter off the waxed cover of the book. 

"Must have been the summer from hell."

"I was living with someone I almost never saw because he was finishing up one job and training for another and working sixteen-hour days between the two and when we did see each other it was mostly to watch bad movies and eat really shitty Chinese he used to complain about having MSG," Neil says. "I wasn't allowed to leave the apartment without a hug even if it meant waiting for him to finish whatever the fuck he was doing and if I got back late he was up waiting for me to make sure I was okay because he trusted me enough to drive his car but not enough to call him if I was in trouble. He had one bed and it was one of those pull-down wall things that creaked every fucking time you moved so if I got up to take a piss when I got back he was awake and wanted to know if I was okay every single time. It was the most annoying fucking thing ever." He actually smiles. Tommy considers making a crack about fainting on the spot and doesn't. "And I've never felt that loved before or since. I guess it all depends on your definition of hell."

Tommy hugs a pillow to his stomach. He's tired. They have nine hours in airports ahead of them, followed by Washington and Singapore. He has a pissy Adam to deal with in the morning. He should sleep and he knows it. 

He's out before Neil gives up his book for the night and clicks off the bedside lamp. When he wakes up in the morning he'll discover he never even pulled up the covers. But before he gets there he's got all this time that's not being filled by Adam's hands and lips and tongue, all this time to think about loving, being loved, what it means to be the centre of someone's world.

How it can feel like heaven. How it can feel like hell.

How maybe there's not really any big difference between the two.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another time, another place  
> The words would only rhyme  
> We'd be in outer space  
> It'd be another song  
> We'd sing another way  
> You wanna prove me wrong?  
> Come back another day  
> Another day
> 
> \--"[Another Day](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PGJ1CKOukw)," from _RENT_ by Jonathan Larson

Tommy knows here is not the place to do this. Anyone could hear them. But it's been coming for days, especially after tonight, and he's tired of not doing anything. So finally he corners Adam in the little room they've been given to dress in, waiting on purpose until Adam's only half-dressed and can't walk off.

"What the fuck was that?" Not exactly _friends, Romans, countrymen_ as openers go, but Tommy's not going for eloquent—he just wants Adam's attention. Adam doesn't hold grudges—usually—but Adam still hasn't said a word to him since before soundcheck, and now, as Adam toes into a sandal, Tommy sees only a bare flicker of eyes before Adam goes back to trying to look like he's ignoring him.

"Hmm?"

"Making me suck your fucking finger onstage," Tommy spits out. "That's not how that's supposed to go."

"Just mixing it up." Adam pulls on a T-shirt, and Tommy could scream.

"Just being an asshole," Tommy corrects. "I want to know what happened to asking me first."

"You said you didn't care in November."

"Yeah, because in November _you were fucking petrified_ ," Tommy answers. "There's a difference between getting carried away and—"

"Why the hell does it matter, Tommy?"

"Because it's basic fucking respect!" Tommy answers, and yeah, now he's yelling, because he caught the look on Adam's face right before there was a hand blocking him, trying to command him, and like Tommy told Neil: he's not Adam's bitch. He won't be commanded. "You don't own me, Adam!"

"And you could bother hanging with me when we're not working or fucking, the way you used to, too, but that's not going to happen, is it?" Adam asks, not yelling yet but definitely raising his voice, yeah, by the time they're done the entire crew is going to know about this.

"I spent _one day_ not on your bus because we had somebody new with us and you're freaking out! No, I haven't been back to your fucking bus, I don't want to spend the night with a fucking control freak!"

"I had no idea where you were until I called Monte—"

"I'm not a toddler, Adam, Jesus, I can take care of myself!" Tommy remembers Neil telling him this is how Adam cares and pushes the idea to the side. It'd be one thing if he were sixteen and Adam's legal obligation, but he's almost twenty-nine years old, thanks, he can decide which bus to catch, and he says so.

Adam slides on a ring, looking into the makeshift makeup mirror before turning toward the door. "I'll see you in Singapore."

"You know something, Adam?" Tommy asks, even though he knows he won't get an answer. Adam's too convinced he's right, that Tommy has some kind of obligation to report his every move. "Fuck you."

Adam walks out.

\--------------

"You must have it, it was in your hand when we got on the plane—"

"I know, but it's not here, Sasha!" Tommy rifles through his bag, painfully aware they have two minutes until they board. Beside him, Adam looks over at the little side-pocket on Tommy's bag before pulling the zip. 

"You're sure you didn't stick it in here?"

Tommy's iPod falls out, tangled up in its earbuds, and the remains of his pretzels land on top. No passport, and there's the boarding call. Tommy feels something cold grab his guts and twist.

"Get out of here." He looks up and sees Adam's eyes, scared, pleading with him to say it was all a joke. If only he could. "You can get another bassist if I can't get there. But there's only one you to sing."

"Tommy—"

"Adam, he's right, we've got to go," Cam tells him, and shoots Tommy an apologetic look. Tommy wishes he could tell her it's okay, there's no reason for them all to be stuck here wasting time and money because of his stupid fuckup, but then he sees Adam's eyes in the edge of his vision again and can't. He's going to start fucking crying if he does, he's sure of it, and Adam doesn't need Tommy's fears stacked on top of his own.

"There's an exchange counter before you leave the Customs side, I saw the sign," Adam says, and folds Tommy's hand around a couple of bills before Tommy can object. "Try to get the next plane. There should be someone in the airport somewhere who can get you to the Consulate if it's really gone. Make sure you ask someone who works here so you're not just wandering around the airport alone, it's dangerous. If they can't replace it they should at least be able to get you back to the States. Make sure you eat something, okay?"

"I will." Tommy glances at the sign that says "FINAL BOARDING CALL" and wishes he had the guts to just kiss Adam goodbye in the middle of the airport; fight or no fight, this isn't how he wants to part ways. Then Brooke leans on the wall next to him, rummaging in her own bag, hiding Tommy from the view of anybody who's not standing right at the gate, and Tommy holds two fingers to his lips before touching them to Adam's. Adam reaches up, cups Tommy's hand with his own.

"I'll see you in Singapore," Tommy says, and Brooke finds whatever she needed so badly and shoves off.

Adam looks over his shoulder as he disappears into the boarding corridor. Tommy waves.

And wishes he was by Adam's side.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And sometimes when we touch  
> The honesty's too much  
> And I have to close my eyes and hide  
> I wanna hold you til I die  
> Til we both break down and cry  
> I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides
> 
> At times I'd like to break you  
> And drive you to your knees  
> At times I'd like to break through  
> And hold you endlessly . . .   
> \--"[Sometimes When We Touch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-s3NZ07Ylo)," Dan Hill

Neil's the one waiting when Tommy finally sprints out the door into Singapore, hauling his bag and ready to drop from exhaustion and adrenaline crash and too many hours in too many lines to get onto too many planes.

"You got through okay?" Neil asks, and Tommy holds up his temporary.

"I've got to go to the courthouse when I go home," he says. "But they'll have one waiting for me. I just have to pick it up."

"Good," Neil comments, and pulls out his phone to call what Tommy assumes must be the taxi service. "Adam might be sleeping when we get to the hotel. Lucky bastard. We're right next to the F-1 track."

"He can sleep through that?" Tommy's a little surprised; sleep has never been Adam's response to stress, and he's not a particularly sound sleeper.

"He had a panic attack because he got a text from you that said somebody couldn't help and apparently he's never heard of cut-off texts before," Neil answers. "I gave him a Xanax."

Tommy raises his eyebrows. This is something else he's never heard of Adam doing. "Did he know what it was?"

"It was in his juice. He didn't know I gave it to him."

"Neil!"

"Preach at me when you're the one watching him go out of his fucking mind," Neil says. "The last time I saw him have one was when Brad was in a car accident and they wouldn't let Adam see him. He hyperventilated until he passed out and before he did he kept saying he couldn't breathe. It's not like I walk around drugging him every single day of his life."

"So you just happened to have them on you."

"No, I got a scrip when I joined the tour because I know the way Adam stresses," Neil corrects, before holding out his arm to wave down the taxi speeding toward them. "If he's awake he'll probably be pretty out of it." He opens the door, then turns back to Tommy. "I don't know what was up with you two at the fair, but let me tell you something. You've got the right to tell him you don't think it's going to work out, if that's what you think and you can do it like a sane human being. It's your relationship. But if you tell him that today—"

"You'll fuck me up," Tommy interrrupts. "You don't have to go all papa bear on me."

"I won't fuck you up, I'll talk to Lane about replacing you." Neil's face is stone. "And if I can't do that, I will make the next three months a living hell for you. Got it?"

Tommy takes a breath. He wasn't planning on telling Adam any such thing—he doesn't think they're beyond repair, if he can convince Adam to chill and swallow his own pride long enough to apologise—but Neil still has a way of scaring the fuck out of people when he resorts to threats. "Got it," he finally says. "And I'm sorry for bitching at you."

"You don't have to kiss my ass, I just don't want you wrecking this for him over some shitty argument," Neil tells him, as he slides into the taxi. "He's been looking forward to the international leg since before the US leg started. It'd be like giving some kid a bike with a puppy in the basket for Christmas and then they find Santa dead in the chimney."

"Classy," Tommy remarks, tossing his bag in at his feet. "I wasn't going to tell him I don't think it's not going to work anyway."

"If you can't just kiss and make up, fake it until the day after tomorrow, would you? Let him have his one big romantic night and all that shit before you do any serious talking unless he brings it up first."

Tommy actually feels his mouth twitch. "I didn't know you were into that."

"I'm not. But he is. That's where we're staying." Neil points out a high-rise building in the middle of a gigantic cluster of them that makes Manhattan look small, sighs, then broods as they head over an overpass toward the hotel. Tommy's glad for the silence, trying to prepare for what he might find at the hotel if Adam's awake, and then they're there and there is no more preparing.

Tommy's not surprised to see Adam in the lobby with Brooke and Cam, but even after Neil's description Tommy's surprised to see Adam's eyes, puffy and so red Tommy has to wonder if Adam actually broke a blood vessel crying. Someone apparently managed to push him into a shower, because his hair's damp and freshly-brushed and starting to curl where nobody gave it the attention of a straightening iron, but even washed and in clean clothes Tommy can see what Adam must have looked like shaking and freaking out, fuck you _very_ much with a side of fuck-your-mother, 160-character limit and dead phone, and Tommy literally feels his heart break. He pulls Adam into a hug, feels Adam's arms lock tight around his waist until the embrace they're in nearly swallows Tommy whole. Adam's mumbling something into Tommy's hair that Tommy can't catch, and all he can do is stroke Adam's back with one hand and sway gently with him in the middle of the lobby and hope nobody thinks too hard about why they'd be holding each other like this. If this is what Adam's like while he's drugged out, Tommy thinks, maybe Neil was right. 

Tommy wants a nap and Adam looks like he needs one, and so after Tommy gets dogpiled by most of the crew he lets Neil lead them onto the lift, where he hands Tommy a pair of keycards. Tommy's about to tell Neil he handed over the spare by mistake when he sees the numbers written on them don't match, and understands: one is for the room he's been assigned with Isaac. One, if he decides to use it, is for Adam's. It's up to them to work out those details. Neil gives Tommy his room number, and then it's just him and Adam, alone on the lift, going up another floor.

They get off together, Tommy supporting Adam through what he suspects is a Xanax-induced stumble and Adam holding Tommy up when he nearly falls from plain old exhaustion. They stop in front of a room that matches one of the keycards, and Tommy swipes it before reaching for Adam's hand to lead him inside. 

It turns out to be Tommy's room, and as he recognises Isaac's bag in the corner he wonders if he should suggest to Adam that they move. Then Adam's hugging him again, and this time Tommy hears some of what he's all but whimpering—apologies for leaving Tommy behind, for yelling at him in Puyallup, fears that Tommy would end up deported and stuck in a California INS cell or possibly stranded for weeks in Hong Kong, all mixed liberally with confessions Tommy doesn't want to hear not because they're from Adam but because it's too much, too fast, and he doesn't know how much of what Adam's saying is something he's ready to say, ready for Tommy to hear, and how much is the Xanax talking. Finally Tommy reaches up and puts a finger on Adam's mouth.

"Shhhh." He leans against Adam's chest and breathes deep, happy to be here even if the humidity makes him feel like he's trying to breathe a swamp instead of air. "It's okay. I got a temporary and I can get a permanent one when I go home this week."

Apparently only part of what he says gets through, because Adam's arms tighten around his waist, fingers creeping into the folds of Tommy's shirt and clutching there. "Don't leave."

"I'm not going anywhere, except bed," Tommy answers. "I'm so fucking tired, you have no idea." Except looking up at Adam's eyes, swollen and red and puffy and darkened by more than just eyeliner, Tommy has the idea that maybe he does.

They strip each other down, fumbling with jeans and boots and the strings on Tommy's hoodie until they're both down to underwear, and then they slide between the covers and Tommy curls up with Adam behind him and a pillow against his front, blissed out on the god that is working A/C and Adam's arms around him and the other god that is an actual, what is this, _bed_. Adam strokes Tommy's bare stomach for a few minutes, nuzzling against his neck, and then his breathing deepens and his hands still. Tommy lies awake in spite of his exhaustion, hyper-aware of Adam's hands in places that could get very awkward very fast if Tommy rolled over and of Adam's stomach against his back and Adam's face burrowed against the back of his neck.

Then he takes one of Adam's hands in his and pulls it up to his heart.

And then, finally, he's able to sleep. 

\------------------

They both stay in Adam's room that night. Tommy flicks off the lights before they're even naked; he knows what's coming, and he doesn't want to see what he knows will be in Adam's eyes. With Neil's quick pharmaceutical fix wearing off the pain is starting to creep back into Adam's face and even the way he walks and holds himself, and even if Tommy'd still been pissed in Hong Kong he wouldn't be able to ignore the way Adam picks at dinner and keeps glancing his way, making excuses to touch Tommy's arm, his shoulder, his leg, to be sure he's _there_ , the whole time with this furtive guilty look in his eyes that Tommy hates.

It's the first time they have sex face to face, although what difference it makes in the dark Tommy isn't sure. It's also the first time he remembers it being—not bad, but not the kind of good he's come to expect, either, and he's not too stupid to know why: they're having sex, yeah, and it's sort of a first thing for them, yeah, but right here, right now, for Adam, it's not about the sex. It's about making sure Tommy isn't going to disappear, and finally when Tommy feels the air around them and realises Adam is on the verge of crying he hooks his fingers and scratches a line down Adam's back—nothing to hurt, but a different sensation to get Adam out and aware—and when Adam shivers a little Tommy makes some kind of sound, what it is he couldn't say but it's enough to get Adam kissing him and running a hand through his hair, whispering I love yous against Tommy's lips and finally, _finally_ smiling again, lips brushing over Tommy's as he does, when Tommy lifts his hips and slipslides on the sheets and makes a disgusted noise and some comment about how it's no wonder someone invented reverse cowgirl, a comment Adam almost certainly doesn't understand but somehow gets anyway.

"Need some help?" he murmurs against Tommy's mouth, and Tommy nods, yeah, he needs help, starting with a therapist who can explain how the fuck he went from straight to bottoming one of his best friends in under a month. Then he realises Adam can't see his nod.

"That'd be good," he manages, because now Adam's getting back into his stage groove, that's all it is, really, just with fewer clothes in the way, and after a second Adam reaches down and hooks Tommy's knee with his hand, brings his leg up not around Adam's waist but tucked _against_ it, somehow, and then Tommy's not sliding on the sheets anymore and _yeah_ , that's fucking _good_.

Tommy realises as Adam cleans up that it's also the first time he remembers really, truly, honest to god actually relaxing in Adam's bed, snuggled between the sheets and waiting to held and cuddled when Adam gets back (and isn't that a first, too, kind of wanting to tease him a little for wanting to clean up like someone's going to come in and see them both naked and sweaty and looking like, god forbid, _actual human beings_ who just had sex?).

It should probably bother him, but then Adam slides into the bed behind him and wraps his arms around Tommy's waist and snuggles against him, no longer pained, needy, guilty Adam but back to bouncy, huggy, touchy-feely in-your-face golden-retriever-in-training lovey Adam, and Tommy's too happy feeling that joy to do anything but roll over and cuddle back.

Tommy thinks he could like Singapore.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From where I stand you are home free, the planets align so rare  
> There's promise in the air, and I'm guiding you.  
> Through every turn I'll be near you, I'll come anytime you call  
> I'll catch you when you fall, I'll be guiding you.  
> \--"[Magic](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHo4l0vy43A)," Olivia Newton-John

"I need to talk to you," Adam says, as Tommy tosses his shaving stuff back into his bag, and Tommy closes his eyes. Even after last night, after that _fucking sick_ concert that left them both so high they just spent their entire last night together kissing and memorizing bodies until sometime close to dawn, touching and caressing and cuddling without even thinking about fucking, he knew this was coming. And he's decided he wants them to be okay too badly to hang onto his pride.

"Look, I'm sorry about—"

Adam puts a finger on Tommy's lips. "Let's forget about that, okay? You were right, I was being an asshole. That's not what we need to talk about."

Tommy blinks up from his bag. That was unexpected. "Then what?" 

"Lane said there's a magazine in Japan that wants to interview you. And we already know pretty much the whole country is going to want to interview me."

"Yeah? So?" Tommy zips his bag and looks around the room to make sure he didn't forget anything. He's never been asked for an official interview before, but he already knows how that's going to go—it'll be his turn to answer questions about his musical influences, makeup, and what he thinks of Japan, instead of Adam's. Most interviewers aren't particularly creative.

"So I think we should probably decide before we leave what it is we're telling people. About us," Adam says, and then Tommy feels a sudden chill.

"You mean about—"

"Yeah," Adam confirms, and pulls Tommy into his arms, nuzzles at his neck until Tommy relaxes, at least a little. "I don't mind telling. Or not, it's up to you. But someone's going to ask, because that's what they do, and—"

"And it looks better if we both agree on what it is we're doing."

"Yeah."

Tommy leans back against Adam and shakes his head. "Fuck, I—I don't know, Adam. I'm not—" Tommy finally breaks off and holds his hands up helplessly. Adam leans over to kiss his cheek.

"If you need more time I'm okay with that," he says, and Tommy reaches for the hand on his waist to press his own against it. "I love you." He leaves enough of a beat for Tommy to say it back, if he wants to, but neither of them fill it, and Adam squeezes Tommy's fingers. Tommy has just long enough to be grateful Adam gets it before Adam speaks again. "I want you to be comfortable. If I've got any chance at all I don't want it to implode over too many zoom lenses and not enough common decency."

"You're really something else, you know that?" Tommy asks, and Adam chuckles.

"I've been told that," he answers. "But nobody ever seems to know what 'something' is."

"Huh?" Tommy pulls out of Adam's arms so he has the room to twist and look up at him.

"Well, if I'm something _else_ there has to be a something to compare me to, doesn't there?"

Tommy groans, grabs the first pillow he finds on the bed, and swings it. Adam laughs and pulls it out of his hands, swinging it back. Tommy takes it directly to the shoulder and grabs another pillow. "Man, you are so fucking _on_."

They're laughing too loudly, lost too far in the muffled thumps of hotel pillows on shoulders and stomachs and heads to hear the knock on the door, or the click of Neil's key, and neither of them can be really bothered to stop when he yells "Hey, you know, we've got a plane to catch!"

They keep going for another five seconds or so, until Adam abruptly drops his pillow, grabs Tommy's wrist, and ends the whole thing with his mouth. There aren't really any good places to hit somebody who's got their tongue in your mouth, Tommy realises, and finally he goes limp and kisses back, tongue tracing Adam's lips and fingers tracing his face, carding through his hair. It's going to be the only chance they have to say goodbye, because like hell he's kissing goodbye in an airport bathroom. Somewhere behind them he hears Neil make the kind of gagging noise that is the sole property of younger siblings who are deliberately trying to be a pain, and then the door swings shut and they break apart.

"We have to go," Adam murmurs, and Tommy nods before bending down to toss his pillow back on the bed and grab his bag. Then he reaches for Adam's hand.

"Not now," he says, and Adam meets his eyes. "Not . . . not yet."

Tommy actually feels guilty when Adam's smile lights up the room, big and open and almost childish, it's so happy. Just because Tommy opened a future with those words, "not yet," and suddenly Tommy wants to wrap Adam carefully in those bubbles you're supposed to send fragile items in and put him somewhere safe where he'll never be hurt badly enough to stop smiling that way. 

"Okay," Adam says, and tips Tommy's head up with two fingers for one last peck before they go. It grows from a peck into a full-lipped kiss, mouths closed but still wholehearted and tinged around the edges with emotions Tommy isn't quite ready to name. "I'll see you in Japan."

Tommy wrinkles his nose as Adam's fringe brushes it and tickles. Then he smiles.

"Okay."

It's probably a good thing he has no idea what the rest of Australasia's going to be like.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phrase Neil gives Adam during the aftershow party, "irete onegai," is an idiom for "please fuck me" because there is no actual "fuck" in the Japanese language; the phrase literally translates to "please insert [refl.]" and would only be used by a woman or a bottoming partner.
> 
>  
> 
> And you make me talk  
> And you make me feel  
> And you make me show  
> What I'm trying to conceal  
> If I trust in you, would you let me down?  
> Would you laugh at me if I said I care for you?  
> Could you feel the same way too?  
> I wanna know the name of the game.
> 
> \--"[The Name of the Game](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XYGUbXor8E)," ABBA

"This is incredible."

"It has hot water, too," Adam grins. "I checked."

"Oh, man," Tommy moans, and flops onto the bed. It feels even better than it looks. "Count me in."

Adam lies alongside him, pulling Tommy into his arms. "A week is too damned long," he mumbles into Tommy's hair, and then Tommy's being touched, relearned, cherished. "How'd your interview go, Big Fucking Rockstar Man?"

"Good," Tommy says, and snuggles back. "Told them we're pretty much like one big family and left it there. I missed you." It's true. Adam spent his vacation being captain of a pirate ship, a story Tommy listens to now with nothing less than pure amusement; most of Tommy's vacation was spent in self-reflection that he can wait to share, and he's more than content to let Adam's voice wash over him, chattering on about Neil's bad Jack Sparrow impression and learning to tie sailor knots before bringing the train of thought not to an end but to a screeching, last-minute halt.

"Enough about Bali, how's your mom?"

"Good enough to still think we're crazy."

Adam laughs, trailing off a little near the end. "Does she know . . . ?"

Tommy shakes his head. "Nobody knows but us."

Tommy feels Adam quiet behind him, and reaches for Adam's hand to squeeze.

He's scared. No, he's fucking _petrified._ Given the choice between this and auditioning for Adam's band again, he'd take the audition in a heartbeat. Nobody ever accused Tommy of being war hero material. But he has to do it, so finally he laces his fingers through Adam's and squeezes. Adam squeezes back, and Tommy feels at least marginally better.

"I don't want to tell anybody public yet," he says. "The tour's supposed to be about your music, not your sex life. It'll just get people focused on the wrong thing." Which is a convenient excuse for being too fucking chickenshit to say anything, Tommy thinks. Adam snickers.

"It hasn't stopped them yet," he points out, and Tommy can tell he's joking around, but it doesn't do much for the sudden ball of nerves in his stomach, and Adam must be able to tell because he grins that come-on-just-trust-me grin and adopts, or attempts to adopt, a deep we-interrupt-this-broadcast voice. "ADAM LAMBERT SEX SCANDAL!! Full details at eleven! And now our top story for the night: following his _scandalous_ performance at last year's American Music Awards, pop singer Adam Lambert was spotted today walking down the street in Nagoya, Japan with his arm around the waist of keyboardist or possibly bassist or backup dancer Tommy Joe Ratliff—"

"I want to tell the band," Tommy spits out, before Adam can get too far into his mock newscast. Adam stops his spiel about Lambert's Questionable Family Values so quickly someone might have slapped his mouth shut. The silence that follows is, Tommy's pretty sure, far louder than the crowd in Singapore. It doesn't sound like Adam is even breathing. Finally there's a great inhale from behind him.

" . . . . for real?"

Tommy squeezes Adam's hand tighter. "For real." 

\--------------

" _Tommy-san_? Seriously, Adam?" Tommy watches as Neil tips his head back and, Tommy's pretty sure, downs half his beer in a single go. Adam takes the beer out of Neil's hand and finishes it in two long swallows, completely ignoring his own beer on the nightstand. "Hey!"

"Well, I was _going_ to say I love you and see if I could make people actually freak, but _you_ wouldn't tell me how to say it," Adam pouts, and Tommy cracks up. 

"Because you _can't_ just say it in Japanese," Neil answers. "I should have just told you to say 'irete, irete, onegai' and let you figure out what it meant."

Adam rolls his eyes. "Go back to your Sailor Moon, Neil," he says, and pulls Tommy into his lap while Neil tries to splutter some kind of half-drunk protest. Adam meets Tommy's eyes, asking a question Tommy does his best to answer, and Adam raises his voice to be heard over Sasha laughing with Taylor and someone's iPod blaring "Poker Face" and Monte and Terrance having the kind of heated argument only friends can manage over who's actually winning their game of Risk. "Guys? Hey, guys!"

Tommy feels suddenly claustrophobic as everyone's eyes land on them. Adam's arms tighten a little around him. "We've got something to tell you guys. And we're keeping it radio silence for now. No interviews, no fan questions, all of that stuff is off-limits until further notice."

Tommy finds Adam's hand and squeezes it. Adam squeezes back. Tommy takes a breath.

"Uh . . . " he swallows. Cam makes an annoyed face.

"Come on, spit it out," she says. "Unless it's something really awful, like being in love with Gene Simmons."

Adam cracks up into the back of Tommy's neck while everyone else laughs, and even Tommy snickers. He doesn't wait to come down from the giggle fit before he answers, because he knows if he does he'll never be able to say it.

"No," he answers, and then he takes Cam's advice and spits it out as fast as he can. "Adam and I are together."

There's silence just long enough for Tommy to be sure he's about to be screamed at. Then there _is_ a scream, or rather, a squeal, and Sasha's in his lap, arms around his neck.

"Tommy, baby, congratulations, oh my god!" she babbles, and as though it's some kind of magic spell the entire room descends, forming a half-standing puppy pile around the two of them, ruffling Adam's hair and slapping Tommy's shoulders and trying to hug them both at the same time. 

Adam finds a free space between Brooke and Isaac to turn Tommy's head, and right before they kiss Tommy sees Neil over Monte's shoulder, and maybe hell does exist, because _somewhere_ has to be freezing over for Neil to be smiling that way.

And yeah, it's true: Tommy's never felt this loved before.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If she knew what she wants  
> He'd be giving it to her  
> If she knew what she needs  
> He could give her that too  
> If she knew what she wants  
> But he can't see through her  
> If she knew what she wants  
> He'd be giving it to her  
> Giving it to her
> 
> \--"[If She Knew What She Wants](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_h282zp2ag)," The Bangles

"Good?"

"Mmmmmmm." Tommy sighs and stretches and burrows a little closer into the pillow. He doesn't have anything against the idea of a handjob alarm clock, he'd just like five minutes before he's required to do anything as strenuous as having an orgasm at this hour.

He hears a familiar chuckle, and then he's rolling over and beating at the hands on his body, and Adam's pulling back so fast Tommy might have suddenly turned into a piece of red-hot iron.

"Don't—"

Adam looks instantly ashamed, and Tommy wishes he could rewind the last two minutes and do them over. "I'm sorry."

Tommy looks down at his own hands and bites his lip. "Don't be stupid, I—" And that's not going anywhere, so Tommy tries again. "It's not you. It's not your fault."

"I shouldn't have assumed you—"

Tommy puts a finger on Adam's lips. "Don't." He pulls his hand back, whatever early-morning calm they might have managed before Neil comes to bang on the door totally wrecked now. "I, uh . . . " Tommy chews a little at the inside of his lip. "I'm . . . guessing if you woke me up at nine in the morning it's for more than soundcheck."

"I—" This time it's Adam who looks away, and Tommy could seriously hate himself for that, for making Adam that ashamed, because Adam never looks away from anybody. "I wanted to go to the Harajuku district," he says, looking at his own hand on the blanket. "I . . . " and he looks back up, upset but still hoping, still trusting—"I was gonna ask if you wanted to come with me."

Tommy's still rattled—and still kind of hard, more than kind of, actually, fuck you very much, body—but he manages to smile a little anyway. "That'd be cool." And he wants to say something, wants to get back to where they were right before he actually woke up because he knows what Adam was trying to do, and if Tommy could get over his own stupid issues it would've been sweet and really fucking sexy, but he doesn't know how to get back there, and finally he just reaches out a tentative hand and puts it on Adam's lower belly. "Close your eyes," he says, and watches as Adam's eyes immediately flutter shut. Tommy closes his own eyes and slides his hand down. Adam catches it.

"Tommy, you don't have to—"

"Just keep your eyes closed," Tommy says, not quite pleading, and after a pause Adam lets go and reaches out to pull Tommy closer and mirror his actions.

Tommy's sure some shrink out there would have a field day with him right now, separating fantasy from reality by drawing a line between what's staged, where everyone can look and scream and take pictures, and what's not, where even he and Adam can't see, but he's not so worried about what a shrink might think of him. As a coping method, it's better than coke. Right now his more immediate concern is his hands on Adam and Adam's touch in return, fingertips tracing over Tommy's skin.

"You okay?" Adam asks, voice soft, and Tommy pulls himself a little closer.

"Yeah. Tell me about this hairy-juku place."

"Harajuku," Adam corrects, and then he gasps as Tommy strokes. "It's—a district in Tokyo where— _shit_ , Tommy—"

"Lemme guess, shopping centre?" Tommy says, and then he sort of sighs when Adam runs a thumb over his head.

"Yeah. Shopping," Adam answers, and it's stupidly awkward and more like their first night than any other time's been but Tommy still can't help smiling a little. Adam's a big talker, and fairly elegant even talking casually, off-the-cuff . . . and it's Tommy who's making that not so right now in this bed. "It's where all the—" he pauses to gasp—"all the really fashion-minded stuff is, and people who-- _fuck_ \--dress up all different ways and-- _shit_ , Tommy."

"Sounds about right," Tommy tells him, and then he doesn't want to say anything more because he'll be the one stuttering and he so wants to win this round. He doesn't open his eyes, but he does reach up to touch Adam's face, and yeah, his eyes are still tightly closed, not looking at Tommy or the bed or what they're doing in it, and that's good, that's really good, and when they finally both come Tommy finds a T-shirt to clean up with before he opens his eyes. Adam's eyes are still closed, and when Tommy finally sits up and tells Adam it's okay to open them he's slow to do it. Tommy studies Adam's face and wants to hate himself again. Adam deserves better, and Tommy doesn't know how to give it to him.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles finally. "It's just, you know, when it's real it's different . . . "

"It's never not been real for me," Adam murmurs, and swings his legs out of the bed. "If your stuff is in your room you should probably go get dressed before anybody sees you walking around." 

Tommy's quiet all day long; Adam seems to be enjoying himself checking out stuff and complimenting a few random teenagers in an amusing mix of broken Japanese and English, but Tommy still feels awkward, and when he's able to escape into the dressing room he breathes a sigh of relief. It isn't that he minds Adam's company, it's just that he needs to think. Tommy has a decision to make and two bad options to pick from. The choice where he stays with Adam means his cuddly, clingy, whatever-the-hell-Adam-is is going to be spending time in a relationship with someone who can't even enjoy being touched. The one where he tells Adam it's not going to work Tommy sees as ending two important things—his place on the tour and worse, that never-been-hurt innocence in Adam's eyes. It's a no-win situation.

Neil wanders in, rummaging through Adam's shit; finally he finds a bright orange bottle and sits on the makeup counter to start slapping its contents liberally over his arms and neck. Tommy smells sunscreen.

"Sutan's gonna kill you if he finds you up there."

"Sutan will live," Neil answers, frowning at himself in the mirror and yanking off his shirt so he can make _absolutely sure_ he hasn't missed any bits. "Is there a spot on my neck?"

Tommy glances up from his lip liner. "No." Then he puts down his pencil. "I need to ask you something."

Neil raises his eyebrows. "Why me?"

"Because you won't waste time being nice." Tommy rummages in his bag for eyebrow pencil, and as he finishes up he lays out the situation for Neil, then waits.

Neil finishes slathering Adam's Banana Boat over his elbows and looks at Tommy in the mirror. "Well?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"I think you're being an idiot," Neil answers, and yeah, Tommy knew he wouldn't waste time being nice. "I think Adam likes sex just like most adults do and I think if _you_ think that's all he's in it for then maybe yeah, you should fuck off and leave him for somebody who actually gets what love means to him and hasn't been listening to him night after night for months without hearing a single word. If it bothers you that fucking much then try talking to _him_ instead of me and, I don't know, how's this for a thought, asking him if you can slow down? There's a radical concept nobody's ever tried."

Tommy looks down at the makeup-stained cotton swab in his hand and tries not to bite his lip. "That makes sense," he finally says, because it's all he can think to say, and Neil snorts.

"Of course it makes sense. And try giving yourself an attitude adjustment while you're at it, because man, if you think the only difference between being his friend and being his partner is fucking him, you are so fucking off-base it scares me."

Neil hops off the counter and pulls his shirt back on. Tommy hears the far-off thud of the back stage door as Neil heads back out, probably on his way to the meet and greet.

_If you think the only difference is fucking him, you are so fucking off-base._

Tommy spends most of the time between then and show thinking about those words. And when Adam, being his usual silly, giddy self, calls out "I love you, Tommy!" onstage that night during a lull in the music—apparently Neil's continuing refusal to give up the goods in Japanese hasn't deterred Adam's oddball sense of humour—Tommy realises it all comes down to one thing: he can be afraid, or he can decide he's not going to be afraid anymore. That's really the only important choice.

And it's not as scary as he thought it would be, watching Twitter freak out when they finally get their hi-def videos and see what he said. It's actually kind of funny—a little like the girls in Tommy's high school who sat in the corner giggling and squealing over are-they-or-aren't-they questions that, Tommy realises, aren't really all that different from what a lot of the saner fans (not the ones who say they own him, those ones are just fucking crazy, he's thinking of the ones who just think he and Adam would make a cute couple) are doing, and then it makes him smile.

And yeah, there _is_ something to be said, he thinks later, curled against Adam's front like a pair of spoons in a drawer, Adam wrapped contentedly around him, in the kind of power he can wield with just four short syllables:

_I love you too._


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole  
> You're so much braver than I gave you credit for  
> That's not lip service
> 
> You've already won me over in spite of me  
> And don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet  
> Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are  
> I couldn't help it, it's all your fault
> 
> \--"[Head Over Feet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw8MgXnBTec)," Alanis Morissette

Tommy can't believe the week is almost over.

His weeks have been pretty much the same all the time since June, it's true—every day he works he's doing the exact same thing—but they've been in the same tiny country for a week, in the same place for _three whole days_ , it's like somebody found heaven and gave Tommy a temporary pass. It's restful in a way even his time back in LA wasn't, and that's probably why, when he sees the girl sitting in the front row with her many colourful bracelets and the mask covered in feathers and rhinestones, he smiles. Even with half her face covered, she's kind of cute. 

Adam sees her too, and Tommy wonders if he's going to have to get bitchy after the show to remind Adam other people are allowed to exist in Tommy's general area. Instead Adam cocks an eyebrow at Tommy that Tommy can't read, so he just sort of smiles and nods a little to acknowledge the eyebrow and goes back to his bass. 

Tommy's scrubbing off his eye makeup—probably harder than he should, but what the hell, it's their last show for a day or two—when Adam comes in, trying to shake glitter out of his hair and only succeeding in spreading it all over everything.

"I saw that group with the masks out by the barricades," he says, and Tommy throws a makeup pad in the trash.

"Yeah?"

"You should go out tonight," Adam tells him. "Get away from the television for awhile." He smiles, and there's something Tommy can't quite place that's wrong with that smile, but then the wrongness vanishes and Tommy figures it was probably, what do they call it, being too tired and getting fucked up. Faulty spacial perception? He doesn't remember. "When's the last time you got to hang out with a bunch of pretty girls?"

"It's been awhile," Tommy admits, and closes one eye to take off his mascara. "You don't want to do anything for the last night in Japan?"

"I'm a little tired," Adam answers, and when Tommy looks at him he can see where, yeah, Adam has circles under his eyes and could probably use a hot shower and about fourteen hours uninterrupted. "Go on, have fun."

So when Tommy's done cleaning up and kissing Adam an early goodnight he goes, slipping out between the barricades after most of the fans are gone and heading off with the masked group who are just as enthusiastic when the rhinestones and feathers come off and they're left in just technicolor makeup. They're all over 20, too, which is great—it means a karaoke bar that serves actual alcohol.

What's not so great is when the first girl he saw in the audience sits down _right next to him_ , smiling in a way that can only mean one thing, and when she puts a hand on his arm Tommy sees a sudden flash of blue eyes in his head and really, _really_ wishes he and Adam had ever talked about what to do in a situation like this. She's cute, yeah, and if he was single he might consider asking her to text him sometime, but he's got somebody waiting for him back at the hotel, and the mental image of Adam trusting Tommy to go out and come back and trying to show the shit that flew over Isaac won't happen again, sleeping peacefully with his face buried in Tommy's pillow while Tommy's out, yeah, they have a word for that, it's called "cheating," is enough to stick a knife in his guts and twist it even when he hasn't done anything.

Finally Tommy just shifts away from her as casually as he can and glances at the time on his phone and pretends to yawn when two of the people in this group—one guy, one girl—finish their song and come back to the table. 

"I hate to be the square, but I should get going, I've got to be up really early tomorrow," he says, idiotically happy that Japanese fans don't do the clingy-obsessive thing some people do. Instead they send him off in a cheerful cloud of well-wishes and congratulations, and if that one girl in the blue and green makeup, the one he saw from the stage, looks disappointed, there's not a whole lot Tommy can do about that. Not a whole lot he's _willing_ to do, that is, even less so because he knows what it must take for Adam to trust him with this.

He tries to be quiet when he lets himself into Adam's room, but he must make some sound, because Adam shifts and then a voice, small and miserable and not very Adamish at all, comes from the bed.

"I told you I don't need the lecture," he says, and Tommy tries to shut the door quietly, wondering if Adam's on the phone. "I'm old enough to decide how the hell I want to run my relationships."

"Adam?"

Adam rolls over, and Tommy sees several things at once: the first one is the tear-tracks Adam tries to wipe off before Tommy can catch them. The second one is that Adam thought he was someone else.

"Hey," he says, and Tommy doesn't need to speak fluent Adam to know that casual tone is a lie. "You're back early."

Tommy kicks off his creepers and heads across the room to sit next to Adam. "It was fun until one of them started hitting on me," he answers. "I thought you'd be asleep."

"Started—" Adam stops in the middle and looks up at him. Tommy stares back.

"What?"

Adam puts his hands over his eyes, like a kid at one of Tommy's beloved B-reels trying to decide if he should be afraid or not. "I can't keep doing this," he says at last, and Tommy opens his mouth to protest. 

"Hey, this hasn't been easy for me, either—"

"I know I'm too self-centred for this kind of a relationship and I can't tell you to spend who the fuck knows how long ignoring what you really want when—"

And that's when Tommy realises what Adam's talking about, and leans to shake him. "Will you fucking stop that? I came back tonight because I'm interested in _you_ , you dumbass, I'm just not—" He takes advantage of Adam's shock to take a breath, because yeah, obviously they need to both put all their cards on the table before everything implodes, and that means saying everything. "If I didn't want to be with you, I'd _tell_ you. I'm not that much of a jackass. I've just never . . . you know, been a bottom before."

"That's easy, you just—" And then what Tommy means sinks in, and Tommy can actually _see_ everything clicking together behind Adam's face. " . . . oh." He scrubs at his eyes with one hand and then lets both of them drop together into his lap. "Shit. Shit, Tommy, I'm so sorry." 

Adam sits up and wraps his arms around his knees. Tommy leans over and rests his head on Adam's shoulder. "So now what?"

Adam finds Tommy's hand, turns it over, squeezes it. "What do you want to do?" he asks, and he sounds way too miserable for Tommy's liking, so Tommy starts his answer by turning Adam's head and getting to his knees so he can reach properly. It's a slow kiss and not a deep one, but he can feel Adam relaxing, and yeah, that's good.

"Just . . . cut me a little slack?" Tommy asks, finally. "You've got ten years on me with this whole discovering-your-sexuality shit. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Or even how I can be doing it when I still don't think guys are hot. Just you."

Adam nods, and the smile on his face is so ridiculously sweet and shy Tommy wants to just wrap it up and keep it forever. "You're doing way better than I did, for what it's worth," he answers, and Tommy smiles back. Adam's smile breaks apart on a gigantic yawn.

"God, cover your mouth," Tommy chides. "Were you born in a barn?" 

Adam laughs and pulls him close, and as they slowly undress each other and slide bare beneath the covers—to sleep, and it's _nice_ , Tommy thinks, to sleep that way with someone, to be trusted that way—it occurs to Tommy that he's walked away from something he may never get back.

And somehow, he doesn't really mind.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I see them every night in tight blue jeans  
> In the pages of a blue boy magazine  
> Hey I've been thinking of a new sensation  
> I'm picking up good vibrations  
> Oop--she bop
> 
> Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar?  
> Huh, yea, I wanna go south and get me some more  
> Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine  
> They say I better stop, or I'll go blind  
> Oop--she bop, she bop
> 
> \--"[She Bop](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzm64zXNjk)," Cyndi Lauper

"Remind me again why we're going in Sasha's room?" Tommy asks, as Adam slides the keycard into the slot and pulls Tommy inside.

"She forgot her makeup bag," Adam answers, and waits until the door clicks shut. "Because you going to my room here is a bad idea and two days of this is going to drive me fucking crazy." He pulls Tommy into a hug, and they kiss in the tight angle of the room where they're hidden from the windows. "God, I'm glad I don't live here." 

Tommy strokes Adam's hair and burrows against his neck. "It's two days."

"Too long," Adam protests. "I can't wait to get to New Zealand." He slips one hand under Tommy's shirt, then slides the bolt on Sasha's door and pulls the zip on Tommy's jeans. Tommy grabs his hand.

"Adam, we don't have a whole lot of time—"

Adam kisses him, then closes his eyes and drops to his knees so fast Tommy would almost swear he fell. Then Tommy's shut up in an entirely different way when Adam yanks Tommy's jeans down around his thighs and goes down on him, _all_ the way down on him, in one single lightning-fast stroke. Tommy's eyes slam shut and he makes a kind of high-pitched noise that, fuck you very _much_ , vocabulary, is totally not a squeak, and has at least enough presence of mind to cover his mouth. 

Tommy's never gotten head in a dark room with his eyes shut before, and either everything is ten times as intense in the dark or Adam's just _really_ fucking good at this, and when Tommy lets his head fall back against the wall and everything else jerk forward Adam grabs his hips to keep him from either sliding down the wall or breaking Adam's neck, and that's fucking _intense_ , metal too thick to ever get skin-warm against long fingers and the brush of a leather wrist-cuff, and yeah, Tommy's never dating someone who doesn't wear a fuckton of jewellery ever again. 

Tommy doesn't dare take his hand off his mouth because he doesn't know what might come spilling out that has the potential to be _really fucking loud_ , but apparently Adam didn't bring a condom, so finally Tommy pries his other hand off the wall and shoves at Adam's shoulder, only to get his hand batted away and then _fuck_ , this is what happens when you don't—

Except as Adam holds him up, pulls off still sucking and with a single long lick and stands up, as Tommy opens his eyes probably a little too fast, Tommy realises Adam's grinning like an idiot. Then Adam flicks on the lights, and as he turns away Tommy catches him licking the corner of his mouth all the way down to his fucking _chin_ , and Tommy groans. 

"Fuck. You," he says, and Adam chuckles low in his throat, but there's a kind of regret in that sound, too.

"No time," Adam answers. "Go clean up. Fast."

Tommy goes, yanking his jeans up and checking in Sasha's bathroom mirror to make sure he doesn't look _totally_ like he just got every man's dream blowjob, and as he comes out Adam hands him the makeup bag. Tommy grabs Adam's belt to stop him. 

"You?" he asks, and Adam smiles and shakes his head. 

"I'd like you to go down on me sometime," he says, and the way he says it—so casually he could be discussing the weather—reminds Tommy that yeah, they've still got a way to go, because he couldn't do that, couldn't be that casual about something like this, even with Adam. "But not like this." He strokes Tommy's hair out of his face. "I want to be able to talk you through it. Slow. Just us. Not speed-fucking in somebody else's hotel room."

And sucking cock shouldn't sound that kind of stupid, hearts-and-stars-in-your-eyes romantic, but after the talk they had in Tokyo it is, somehow, just the right blend of sweet and and dirty—a night in Adam's bedroom learning with no pressure, instead of a five-minute half-anonymous tryst—and Tommy leans up to kiss him one more time before they go, Adam muttering down the hall about how Sasha _really_ needs to learn to pack her stuff so it's all in one place because finding her shit is a total nightmare (a nightmare, yeah, Tommy thinks, it was right in the middle of the bed and it was totally there on purpose, if he knows Sasha and Adam).

They're far apart on the stage that night, and for the first time Tommy feels that separation as an actual ache in his heart, a hurt only comforted by the knowledge that they _will_ be together again, that Malaysia isn't forever.

Adam's right, he thinks: New Zealand can't come fast enough.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exit light  
> Enter night  
> Take my hand  
> We're off to never-never land
> 
> \--"[Enter Sandman](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NEom69xCX8)," cover by Adam Lambert

Adam forgot.

This is what Tommy thinks as he tunes his bass while Adam talks to the sound guy; Adam hasn't mentioned a single thing, and Tommy _could_ say something but if Adam did forget Tommy doesn't want to give him something more to stress out about. He has enough on his plate without Tommy adding more.

Adam finally gives the sound an okay and glances at the band. "Hey, Tommy, you and Neil wanna go get lunch and we can do the acoustic check while you're gone?" he asks, and Tommy tries not to be hurt. Happy fucking birthday, Tommy Joe: you get to be an errand boy.

"He didn't forget," Neil says, as soon as they're in the cab, and Tommy jumps. 

"The hell—"

"Because you've looked all day like somebody kicked you and it's in my phone," Neil interrupts, like it should be the most obvious thing ever. "Before you ask, no, I don't know what he's planning. But I guarantee it'll be a fucking pisser when you get it. Adam doesn't know the meaning of 'gift card'. I mean, unless that's what you asked for, and then you'll probably get it hand-delivered by a naked Playboy bunny or something."

"No bunny," Tommy says. "We talked about that in Tokyo."

"He said you talked," Neil answers. "Didn't share details. McDonald's?"

"Adam hates McDonald's." 

"Adam eats McDonald's salad and it's just lunch," Neil says, and after pondering for a few seconds Tommy nods. Surprise present or not, Adam deserves some kind of comeuppance for letting Tommy believe his birthday went forgotten. Tommy will remember what Neil said about choosing his battles; just letting Adam play mindgames with him is one battle he'll fight.

Neil orders with the kind of absent, rapidfire monotone that comes only with having known people and their preferences for many months, and Tommy raises his eyebrows when he realises two of those Big Macs have to be Neil's.

"Hungry?"

"Starving," Neil answers, as they head out, both of them carrying multiple bags. "I've been up since six."

"Where the hell do you put it all and how are you and Adam related, again?" Tommy asks, sliding back into the cab.

"I think it's because the same two people had sex to make us both," Neil suggests, opening a bag and tearing into his first Big Mac while Tommy wrinkles his nose. "But you might want to ask a bio professor about that one."

"I'll pass." Tommy reaches for his burger so he can nibble on his way back.

Adam raises his eyebrows when he sees the McDonald's bags, but then Tommy raises his back— _yeah? You got something to say? You really want to?_ —and Adam drops his eyes. Tommy's seen convicted murderers who looked less guilty.

They finish up their food, and as Adam pokes at the last of his salad Tommy sits up straighter on the platform. "What about encore?" 

"20th Century Boy," Adam says. "We can get that from the rest of the set. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Tommy abandons his apple pie and follows Adam back down one of the maintenance corridors. "What?"

That guilty look is on Adam's face again, all over it. "Listen, I'm really sorry," he says at last, and he actually looks it. "I didn't want to say anything until after sound check because I didn't want to have to back out if we ran over." He rubs the back of his neck with one hand, and then he gives Tommy this look like a junior-high kid about to ask some girl to a dance. "Do you . . . do you want to go to dinner tonight? Just us?"

"Just—" Tommy tries to imagine that. It wouldn't be a long dinner, of course; Adam's soul isn't his own these days. But it would be _something_ , both of them tucked back in some deserted corner just having a chance to talk outside the cocoon that is the plane hotel dressing room stage rinse and repeat. Tommy thinks about being the centre of Adam's attention for an hour and hides a smile.

"Do you think we can without . . . ?" 

"Yes, because I have a genius for a brother," Adam answers. "He said he found a place where we could get a private table. Nobody else would even know we were there."

Tommy stops hiding the smile. "Okay."

"Happy birthday," Adam murmurs against Tommy's lips as he folds him into a hug, and Tommy leans against him in the hall, thinking about how it feels so blessedly _normal_ to be asked on a date, to be able to simply say yes and have something incredible for his birthday.

Neil could tell him he has no idea, but sometimes finding out first-hand is best.

\-----------------

Even when Monte starts playing something that's definitely not "20th Century Boy," Tommy doesn't suspect a thing.

It's not until Adam puts a hand on his shoulder and says "and in celebration, tonight we're going to sing one of his favourite songs" that Tommy starts getting the idea Monte isn't just fucking around, and then Adam says "and I . . . kind of know the words, sorta" and yeah, they're playing fucking _Metallica_ , man, Neil wasn't kidding about Adam coming up with the most totally fucking rad gifts in this or any other universe.

Tommy bites his lip to keep from busting out laughing when Adam says it's going to be like karaoke (because if there's one thing he knows about Adam it's that Adam's pretty much _incapable_ of just singing along like it's karaoke, even when he's singing with the radio he plays around with the lyrics and the tempo and the notes) and listens to the beat to pick up the bass line, then wonders when Cam and Isaac even had the time to learn this because Monte knows it but Cam isn't a Metallica fan and Tommy's not so sure Isaac is, either, and _then_ he remembers Adam sending him for lunch with Neil and Tommy mutters "you sneaky son of a bitch" under his breath, grinning like an idiot the whole time.

Tommy hears, somewhere far off and distant, Adam telling everyone "this is all for Mr. Tommy Joe" before he waits a couple of bars to get his bearings and start singing, but Tommy's already totally headbanging away and blissed out on those first few measures, he's _playing Metallica with the most awesome fucking band ever_ in front of a few thousand screaming people, and he can hear a couple of them in the front row singing along a little off-key but totally making up for lack of experience with enthusiasm, easing Adam over those first couple of lines. Tommy looks over between verses and sees Adam still sitting on his knees, apparently completely unembarrassed by having to sing off the back of a bunch of old set lists (and how big did he write those lyrics, exactly?), belting out the words like he's been singing them since birth, and Tommy can only imagine how many times Adam's listened to this song, this song he _hates_ , on eternal repeat on planes and between interviews to learn them as well as he has. Tommy comes back to the front of the stage for a peek, and then he looks out at the faces he can see before they're swallowed by darkness and yeah, he totally feels like a real fucking rock star right now.

And then Adam starts bouncing on his heels, and yeah, it's probably just because Adam fidgets when he can't move but _fuck_ if it doesn't look like something completely different, and Tommy has to go back to the back of the stage, he's _got_ to, before he does something embarrassing like jumping Adam's bones in front of two thousand screaming fans (who'd probably love it even if that's not the show they paid to see, but there are some things the fans just don't need to be privy to). Except it's like Adam's chasing him all around the stage without ever moving, because as soon as Tommy gets comfortable in the back Adam turns and spreads his legs and yeah, normally Tommy wouldn't be able to see jack shit from this angle but Adam's far enough out front that he can see _everything_ , he's getting a free show from the kitty pen, and it only takes a couple of seconds before he decides he's going to be a lot more comfortable up at the front, where all he'll be able to see is the back of Adam's head.

Finally, _finally_ Adam stops being sin personified and stands up, and Tommy flips his hair out of his face to see if there's some cue he's going to need. Adam raises an eyebrow and crooks a finger, and after standing his ground for just a second— _you can only boss me around so much_ —Tommy goes. He can already hear people in the audience screaming, they know what Adam doing that kind of thing means (or at least, they think they do, and they're usually right so Tommy can't really split hairs), and so as Adam tells him "happy birthday" Tommy decides to flip the tables. There's only so much he can do at his height, but he leans and stretches up and he can _feel_ Adam's surprise in his lips and teeth and tongue as Tommy kisses him back with as much enthusiasm as he can spare while trying not to fuck up a progression he doesn't actually know. 

_It's never not been real for me,_ Tommy hears in the back of his head, and yeah: even under the lights, even where everyone can see and cameras are flashing right and left, this time it's real for him, too.

\----------

They're barely in the wings before Tommy has Adam pressed against a wall, up on his toes with his arms around Adam's neck, fingers tangling in his hair, probably smearing his lipstick all to hell and not caring as Adam takes Tommy's weight on his arms and helps him stretch.

"That was fucking _amazing_ ," Tommy breathes against Adam's lips when they break apart just long enough to get air, and then he goes back to kissing Adam before he can get any kind of response because yeah, whoever said music was the world's best high (and maybe it was somebody famous and maybe it was one of his friends, he doesn't remember right now and _really_ doesn't care) was totally right, Tommy could totally stand here covered in sweat and glitter with Adam right up against him forever, and when Adam pulls away Tommy puts a hand on the back of his neck to keep him from trying to escape off to one side.

"I'm sorry I lied to you," Adam murmurs, and Tommy stretches as far as he can to kiss him again.

"Oh, shut _up_ ," he says, wondering what he'll do if Adam starts squirming and then not needing to worry about it because that's Adam's tongue tracing his lips, and yeah, they could be here for awhile, at least until Tommy needs to breathe again. "If that's what I get—" and Adam looks like the most incredible hot mess backed against one of the wings with his hair finally starting to give up the fight against gravity and traces of Tommy's lipstick clinging to his gloss and his makeup faded out by an hour under the stage lights, so Tommy interrupts himself to press another kiss against Adam's mouth—"when you—lie to me—you can do it—whenever the fuck you want," he finally finishes, and Adam's hand is just creeping under his shirt, fingers sliding over sweat-slick skin and headed up Tommy's back, when both of their earpieces crackle and Neil's voice comes over the channel.

"Adam, tech wants to know when they can unwire you," he says. "And you might both want to know I've been keeping people out of this wing for the last three minutes because I can totally see every single thing you're doing right now. You're on Channel 4."

Tommy jumps. Adam flicks on his mic—off the public channel, according to Neil—and raises it. "Are you standing over there watching me make out?"

"It's a dirty job," Neil's voice buzzes in Tommy's ear. "But somebody's got to to it."

"Fuck you, Neil."

When Neil's voice comes back, it sounds shocked, in that I'm-faking-but-totally-genuine way Tommy's convinced only the Lambert boys can actually pull off. "Hey, only that once when I was trying to pay for college!"

Adam snickers and leans his forehead against Tommy's, stroking his back beneath the damp black cotton trying to cling to Tommy's skin. "I'll be back in a minute. Go ahead and let the crew out," he says, then raises the mic high enough for Neil to see and switches it off again. "We should go."

"Yeah," Tommy answers, and he's a little bit startled to realise he doesn't really want to. Adam leans over to talk into his ear, tugging out Tommy's in-ear so he can speak low.

"We don't have to be up early tomorrow," is all he says, but Tommy feels every slowly-relaxing nerve in his body coil right back up to full tightness, and he knows what it is Adam means by that so-innocent-sounding statement. And yeah—tonight he could really go for that.

Tommy never does quite figure out how he gets out of makeup and costume and out to sign, into the car, off to the party the crew planned—it's all a blur, mixed in with lightning-fast touches and glances that don't do anything to cool him down. Some girl in the crowd before he escapes giggles and tells him she hopes he enjoys his birthday head, and Tommy blinks at her while she giggles with the girl next to her— _shit, is it that obvious?_ Then he sees the flash of an iPhone and gets it; the badgers are up to something again, and he'll probably see it all over his feed later. Okay, then; let them have their fun, and he'll have his. 

Oh, will he _ever_ have his.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Touch me (touch me), all silent (all silent)  
> Baby just tell me (tell me please) all is forgiven (touch)  
> Consume my wine, consume my mind  
> I'll tell you how (where I go where I go)  
> Touch me, just try it (just, just try it)  
> Now that's it (now there that's it), god  
> (oh god that's heaven) There, oh, that's heaven (touch)  
> I'll love you right (oh, I'll love you right)  
> We'll wander down where the winds cry (oh, where the sins lie)  
> Touch me (oh) just like that (oh)  
> Now lower down, where the sins lie  
> Love me (love me), just for a bit  
> Now wander down where the winds sigh
> 
> \--"[Touch Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCDWWHYkk4Y&fmt=18)," Spring Awakening

Adam sits down next to him somewhere around the time Neil hits the dance floor with Sasha, both of them holding the remains of a beer each and Sasha giggling madly. Sasha wobbles. Neil grabs her waist, and she puts a hand on the back of his neck before he says something and they both start snickering, foreheads together. Tommy kind of hopes at least one of them has a good supply of ibuprofen, because they're totally wasted, and Monte's probably going to have to walk them back to the hotel. Tommy watches Adam pull out his phone casually, like he's going to check his feed or play a couple of rounds of Angry Birds, and then Tommy hears the little shutter-click sound and Adam grins impishly at him, turning the phone to show him a picture of Neil and Sasha in a position Neil would find horribly compromising if he were sober, namely, _having fun_. Adam leans over and puts his lips against Tommy's ear to be heard, and Tommy fights a shiver.

"Should we go while they're occupied?" he asks, and Tommy nods. He appreciates Neil's help at the theatre, but he likes the idea of tonight uninterrupted.

The hotel isn't far from the club the group dragged him to, and Tommy breathes deep as they set off down the block. New Zealand smells like spring instead of fall, even if it's a very different kind of spring, and Tommy intends to enjoy it while he can. Adam glances around—the streets are still moderately full, mostly of partiers, but nobody's given them so much as a passing glance, and after a moment's hesitation on Adam's part Tommy feels a couple of ringed fingers brush against his. He brushes back, and their fingers hook and catch, Adam grinning down at him like a kid and squeezing Tommy's hand. Tommy's return smile when he squeezes Adam's fingers is more in his eyes than on his mouth, but they're walking under a streetlamp when he gives it, and he can tell Adam sees.

They're barely through Adam's door when Adam pulls off Tommy's jacket, hangs it on the hook by the door, and folds Tommy into his arms. "We need to talk."

Tommy tenses—is this really how the night ends? Dinner and that fucking _awesome_ set and . . . this, because Tommy's never heard "we need to talk" end well—and then Adam kisses his neck, just a gentle press of lips to skin. "Chill," he says, and nuzzles against Tommy's neck, stroking Tommy's side with the backs of his fingers. "It's nothing you've got to worry about."

Tommy relaxes a little, just enough to let Adam lead him by the hands from the door to the bed, where Adam sits and pats the spread. Tommy hesitates, then sits next to him.

"So you know by now I'm a total idiot," Adam tells him, and Tommy blinks. Not quite the opener he was expecting. "Relationships are like a game. You've got rules and outcomes and rewards and penalties for things you do. It sounds really unromantic when you put it that way, but it's true. And we've been playing by my rules with my rewards and penalties for six weeks, and I never even bothered to ask about yours." 

"Adam—"

Adam puts a finger to Tommy's lips. Then he reaches for Tommy's hands, folds his own around them, stares directly into Tommy's eyes with that gaze so perfectly honest it could shame a newborn. "I'd like to learn your rules, Tommy Joe," he says, and it's a dumb kind of metaphor and Adam was totally right about it sounding like the least romantic thing on earth, but it still makes something catch way back in Tommy's throat. "Nothing's off-limits. Show me what you want."

Tommy's pretty sure that sound wasn't really a gasp when it started, but somewhere along the way part of it died and the air was the only thing left. Adam pulls Tommy into his arms. 

"If you want to talk, or go to bed right now, we can do that," Adam tells him. "Separate or together." He pauses. Tommy stays silent. "Or we can . . . do pretty much anything as long as you don't need something that's not in one of our bags," he continues, and Tommy can tell from Adam's tone that Adam's feeling his way along carefully, trying to not scare Tommy or box him in. "The sky's the limit if you're a little creative. I've been told I do really good backrubs." And he really starts kneading the spot at the base of Tommy's neck with his thumbs, the promise of something a little more exciting than that in every tiny circle his fingers make. "Could see if I can make you come without either of us touching your cock," he suggests. "I've always wanted to try that with somebody." Another pause. "You could top."

Tommy feels his fingers tighten on Adam's arm and wills himself to not leave nail-prints. He knows what kind of commitment it takes for Adam to offer something like that, because Adam simply doesn't, even on nights when Tommy's pretty sure he curls up to sleep restless because he wants, sometimes badly, but either can't or won't bottom. "Really?"

Adam's hand runs through his hair. "Yeah."

Tommy reaches up to catch the hand before it can get away.

"Yeah." He threads his fingers through Adam's and presses their joined hands against his shoulder, into the little hollow there where it feels almost like he's holding a piece of Adam against his heart.

Adam burrows against Tommy's neck. "You know where my stuff is, right?"

Tommy nods, reaches back to run his free hand through Adam's hair. He knows Adam doesn't bottom because of a drunken late-night conversation back when they still had the buses, but as soon as he'd said it he'd clammed up, and Tommy has no idea what Adam's thinking after making that kind of an offer. Adam actually _nuzzles_ into Tommy's hand, and Tommy smiles a little before sliding off the bed to dig through Adam's bag for lube and condoms. 

He sets both on the nightstand in easy reach before flicking off the light and reaching out for Adam in the dark. It's one reach he's gotten good at, and it doesn't take long before he's finding Adam's T-shirt to pull over his head, pulling Adam into his arms this time instead of the other way around. He can feel the heat of Adam's skin through his own shirt, and rubs a circle on Adam's back with the heel of his hand. 

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Adam says, and he _sounds_ like he means it, but maybe there's something underneath that Tommy couldn't hear with the lights on, because he's calling bullshit as soon as the word is out of Adam's mouth.

"You sure?"

This time there's a pause. Then Adam pulls Tommy's shirt up and over, snuggling against him so tightly Tommy would swear Adam's trying to feel his heartbeat without actually searching for it with his hand. "It's just . . . been awhile, that's all." He lays his head against Tommy's shoulder, and Tommy runs his fingers through Adam's hair again, other hand on Adam's back, still rubbing circles and up and down along his spine, cuddling him. Being the comforter, instead of the comforted, and finally he feels Adam relax, nuzzling into the hollow of Tommy's neck, the minute tickle of his eyelashes brushing against the skin there as he closes his eyes.

"How long is 'awhile'?" he asks, and when Adam answers, more relaxed or not, Tommy can tell he's trying to keep his voice neutral.

"Seven years. I've only ever done it once."

And then it all clicks: when Adam lost his virginity, not forced but pressured by too much alcohol and too many well-meaning friends who didn't stop to think about what it might mean to Adam personally if he'd already hung onto his virginity for three years after coming out, picking someone he only kind of knew to hand over that kind of power to. Tommy thinks about his first night in Adam's bed, how totally insistent Adam was on giving Tommy an out, and he finds Adam's cheek in the dark and kisses it. 

"You know, if you want to try something else—"

Adam turns his head and presses his lips to Tommy's before pulling back only so far that their lips still touch when he speaks.

"I trust you."

He smiles against Tommy's mouth, and yeah, there's nervousness there, but Tommy can feel that trust, too, and it warms him in a way nothing else could ever begin to replicate.

"You have to tell me what I'm doing, I don't have a fucking clue," he says, and Adam laughs, every little sound travelling through his chest and into Tommy's body, a series of small rumbles and vibrations, and Tommy feels kind of stupid until Adam skims a kiss over his cheek.

"That's okay, I just realised I'm not even sure I can bend this way anymore," he answers, and Tommy snorts and hits his shoulder.

"You fucking liar, I see you do it onstage all the time," he protests, and then the two of them are lost in a flurry of beer-tinted kisses and laughter, rolling over and pushing each other until Tommy feels his foot hit the edge of the bed. "Hey, stop, I'm gonna fall."

Adam stills at once, and in the sudden silence everything from Tommy's breathing to the rustle of the bedcovers is too loud. Tommy finds Adam's hand in the dark and squeezes it. Adam squeezes back, and Tommy sort of stumbles his way over Adam's legs, groping for the edge of the bed with one hand so he doesn't fall and break his neck, to get to the nightstand with everything on it. 

He finds the little plastic tube he's looking for and stretches out on the bed, finding Adam and pulling him closer until they're skin to skin, kissing and touching and, in Tommy's case, hunting for belt buckles. Finally he gets both of them open and pushes Adam's jeans down his legs, squirming out of his own ungracefully enough that he's grateful for the dark. He kisses Adam again, long and sweet and trying to say without actually saying it that it's okay if Adam changes his mind. Adam finds the hand with the lube in it and twists off the cap. 

"This isn't as hard as people think it is," Adam says, and he finds Tommy's other hand, brings both of them together. "It's really just a slower version of fingering."

Tommy touches the end of the lube container to his fingers so he can be sure he's not about to squirt a nice long sticky ribbon of it all over the bed and feels Adam roll over.

"Uh . . . should I be, you know . . . wearing a rubber on my fingers or something?"

"You can if you want to," Adam tells him. "I got tested before the tour and I'm clean. It's your call."

Tommy thinks about it just long enough to think about how damned _honest_ Adam is, and then he runs his free hand down Adam's back to find his ass. He hears Adam gasp when he switches hands—and yeah, there's probably some way to warm up lube that he doesn't know about, because it's chill against his fingers and he doesn't remember it ever being freezing cold when Adam preps him, and he makes some mental note to find a place that sells that liquid stuff that's always room temperature and warms right up—but then Adam relaxes back against the bed, and Tommy starts smearing lube, sliding in a finger and trying to remind himself this is somebody's _butt_ here, this should be gross, except Adam keeps himself clean and even if he's nervous Tommy can tell he's already enjoying himself, squirming a little and spreading his legs so Tommy can reach, murmuring some soft sound of approval. Tommy can feel Adam evening out his breathing, trying to chill out, and finally Adam gropes around for Tommy's free hand and holds it. 

"I'm ready when you are," he says, and he doesn't _sound_ ready but when Tommy puts a hand on his back it's totally relaxed, just this side of limp. _Pliant_ , and in Tommy's head the far-off image of fixing Adam's lip gloss mixes with Adam licking his lips in Malaysia and Tommy nearly groans. Instead he takes a deep breath so he can actually make coherent sound, buying a little time by rolling on the condom, and it almost feels weird to be wearing one, he's gotten so used to not needing it.

"Okay."

Adam turns onto his back and finds Tommy's hands, guiding them down below his own knees. "Over your shoulders," he advises. "Don't be afraid to let me slide, I'll stop you if something hurts."

"Okay," Tommy says again, and lifts Adam's legs up and over, taking Adam at his word and letting his legs slide until his knees catch on the insides of Tommy's elbows, and then he plants his own knees and tilts his hips forward and Adam makes this kind of little noise that isn't exactly a moan. Tommy stops, not sure if that's his cue to pull out, but there's just Adam's breathing and then the slipslide of Adam's hand trying to find a free spot on Tommy's shoulder before settling for his neck. 

"Go on, I'm good," Adam breathes, and yeah, that's exactly what he's doing, Tommy thinks: counting breaths, the same way Tommy did the first time he warmed Adam's bed. It jogs something else in his head, and Tommy's not really big on bed talk most of the time, but the way Adam does it is growing on him, and finally after he leans against the push of Adam's legs to kiss him Tommy murmurs something against his lips.

"You know why I love you?"

One of the breaths Adam is counting cuts off in the middle, and then Tommy feels him shake his head and wishes he had a free hand to stroke Adam's hair. He settles for planting another kiss at the corner of Adam's mouth, instead.

"Because you're the only person I've ever met who loves other people the way you do," Tommy tells him. "And you don't take shit for granted like you should get it just 'cause you're you."

He doesn't have Adam's way with words even when he's not having sex, and when he's not on full brain power the idea of even _trying_ for that kind of eloquence is a joke, but he hears the sound Adam makes when he says it and the next sound when Tommy pulls back and then pushes forward again, and for absolutely no logical reason he can think of at all he does something else new on this night of firsts.

He stretches up, balancing his weight on a single arm, finds the edge of the nightstand.

Gropes along it until he finds the cord for the lamp.

And turns on the light.

The lamp is almost too bright, even though it's one of those low-watt bulbs that aren't worth shit, and for a few seconds Tommy has to slit his eyes against it. Then his vision clears and he looks down, and it's his turn to miss a breath. _This is what I've been missing this whole time?_

Adam's hair is spread in an inky pool against the white sheets, most of his freckles all but invisible against the dark flush across his cheeks and nose, mouth open, his head thrown back, baring his neck with a trust so complete it almost hurts to look at—like just looking is a violation. His eyes are closed, and Tommy can just see his lashes, long and stained dark by night after night of heavy mascara, fanned out against his skin before Adam registers the light and opens his eyes, dark with desire and pleasure.

Tommy's heard people talk before about their partners being hot during sex. He's never understood it until now.

"Oh my god, you're fucking gorgeous," he manages, and yeah, it probably shouldn't be possible for Adam to be flushed and hard _and blushing_ and not passing out from lack of blood to places that aren't his face or cock, especially given the size of the latter, but he's managing it somehow. He slides his hand from the back of Tommy's neck up and through Tommy's fringe, pushing it out of his face, looking, studying, and Tommy wonders if Adam knows that when he's aroused he has sort of these green rings around the edges of his pupils that aren't normally there. Then he feels Adam's fingers tracing over the lines in his sleeve, and he's probably way the fuck off because he's not looking anywhere near Tommy's arm (or maybe he's perfectly on, it'd be par for Adam's course for him to have perfectly memorised the colours and edges and positions of every single tattoo Tommy's got), but it feels fucking incredible, and finally Tommy makes some kind of noise and leans forward to kiss Adam again, and Adam's hand tightens in his hair, fingers curling through it and twitching as Tommy moves, and just before their lips meet he murmurs a single word.

"Faster."

And yeah, there's no good way to deny that's a moan. Or that even topping, he's Adam's bottom now, because Tommy fucking _hates_ being told what to do and those two half-trembling, nearly-whispered syllables would have been enough to get him hard, if he'd been jerking Adam off instead of fucking him.

Tommy flops bonelessly onto the sheets when they've finished, Adam's come still spattered over his stomach and sweat still beaded across his shoulders and collarbone. Eventually he's going to have to get up and get something to wash with. He knows that. He just needs to be able to walk again first.

Adam opens his eyes and looks over, and when his glance catches Tommy's he smiles before rolling onto his side and making sure Tommy can't ever say he's never been thoroughly kissed. It's deep, Adam's tongue pressed against his and tracing the roof of Tommy's mouth, but it's also slow and sweet, and apart from the whole French thing (and the being naked part, can't forget that) it's so neutral, just a quiet sharing of pleasure with no lust attached, that it's almost innocent, and when he pulls back he smiles again, this time against Tommy's mouth.

"That was incredible."

"Yeah," Tommy agrees, and it's going to mean they both need to wash up, but he doesn't really care—he just winds his arms around Adam's neck and presses close to him, and honestly, he'd be content to sleep this way and leave the shower for the morning, it's not like they're going out in public again tonight, and then he thinks he hears Adam murmur thank you for something, but he's not really sure.

And yeah—that shower's going to have to be in the morning, because Tommy's too busy falling asleep in Adam's arms to care.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't matter, go on and shatter  
> I'm all you need  
> Broken pieces break into me  
> Saw imperfectly what you should be  
> Lay here, it's safe here, I'll let you be broken open  
> Hide here, confide here, so we can be broken open
> 
> \--"[Broken Open](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agFAO-nnqAk&fmt=18)," Adam Lambert

They're barely into the dressing rooms after encore in Sydney when Tommy's against a wall, one of Adam's hands beneath Tommy's shirt pressing him to the wall and the other wound tightly in his hair, Adam's lips hard against Tommy's mouth and Adam's cock hard against his thigh. But it's not his usual just-this-side-of-too-pushy dominance—the hand in Tommy's hair actually _hurts_ , not in a good way—more like Adam's forgotten what little he's ever known about how S&M actually works and doesn't really care if he literally snatches Tommy baldheaded—and Tommy squirms and pushes at him at the same time.

"Ow, Adam, what the hell?" He stares up, and whatever in Adam drove him to a display almost too violent for comfort drains out of him, leaving him with a contrite expression nothing like the whoops-sorry-Ma Cheshire grin he flashed the audience only a few minutes ago. Adam lets go, and when he realises there are strands of Tommy's hair clinging to his hand he visibly winces and then runs his fingers gently through what's left on Tommy's head to ease the sting.

"I'm sorry, shit . . . " Tommy can see Adam getting ready to go into one of his long and rambling apologies and touches a finger to his lips. 

"Adam, are you okay?"

At first he thinks Adam's going to say he's just fine, just got carried away, and work his way around the roadblock Tommy threw up so he can make his apology. Then Adam looks down and shakes his head, and Tommy glances at the paper over the mirror before running his own fingers through Adam's hair.

"Get dressed," he says. "Don't worry about taking off your makeup yet unless it's bugging you. I'll be back in five, okay?"

Adam nods, and Tommy heads for the dressing room the band is sharing, stripping down fast and pulling on jeans and a T-shirt before having a couple of quiet words with Isaac and borrowing his jacket and a baseball cap. It's too chill even in Australia to go bare-armed (not to mention his tattoos aren't exactly subtle), but his hoodie is too recognisable for what he wants.

Adam's in his own jeans when Tommy gets back, the heaviest of his makeup gone but traces of glitter and eyeliner still clinging to his skin. Street makeup, pretty much. Tommy checks to make sure he's in shoes, then takes the jacket he borrows from Monte and makes Adam shrug into it.

"Tommy, what—"

"There's a maintenance tunnel that'll let us out on the other side of the street," Tommy answers. "We're going for a walk." He sees the look of protest on Adam's face and puts a finger against his lips before he can start. "Just for like ten or fifteen minutes. Fans've waited longer before."

He leads Adam down a tunnel that's supposed to be for staff and Really Important Guests Who Need To Make A Fast Getaway only, feeling weird and still sort of like they shouldn't be there, and then they're breathing the outside air and walking down the street toward the university hand in hand. Tommy doesn't waste the time they've got by musing about how Sydney has incredible light pollution or making small talk; he just gets straight to the point.

"What's going on with you, Adam?" he asks, shifting his hands because he's taller than Isaac but Isaac's arms are longer and his sleeves come down to Tommy's knuckles. Adam takes a breath that sounds like he's not crying yet, but could be.

"Look, this isn't on you, I'm just—"

"Don't give me shit because you don't want me to feel guilty, _say it_ ," Tommy interrupts. "I got directions off the tunnel maps and there's not very far we can go before we have to turn around because I don't remember it all. And you're the one who's all into effective communication and stuff, you should know it's not gonna help if you don't say anything."

"I'm really not used to hiding stuff," Adam spits out. "And I know you're probably right and talking about it right now could really derail the tour and I don't want to push you into anything but—I want to be able to go _out_ , you know? Just . . . not have to look around to make sure nobody's getting pictures of us holding hands or asking Neil to hide your keycard so nobody wonders why you're staying in my room or . . . pulling shit like tonight so everyone thinks I'm still single. It's weird."

Tommy takes a deep breath. He knows Adam's been more than patient, and kind about his patience; he also knows he's still scared.

And he knows, too, that being scared for life isn't the way he wants to be. 

"We've got seven weeks until the tour's over," he says. "If—shit," he interrupts himself. It sounds lame even before he says it. Adam glances over at him.

"If what?"

Tommy shakes his head. "It's not fair," he answers, and Adam squeezes his hand.

" _Life_ isn't fair, Tommy. _You_ just say it."

Tommy looks up. He can see a cluster of buildings that can only be the university. Time to turn around. He grabs Adam's other arm to stop him, make them face to face. 

"If this is still what you want then, we'll tell everybody," he says. "No matter what, I promise."

Adam shakes his head. "I said I didn't want to make you do something you're not ready for."

"Then I guess I better get ready, shouldn't I?" He tries to smile. It feels too big and fake and afraid, and Tommy does what he did when he was still a teenager a couple of months too young to actually be in the bar with the rest of his then-band for a gig: visualises a stage, and the audience, and then instead of the audience in their underwear or an agent with a giant smile on his face taking enthusiastic notes on how fucking amazing they are he imagines walking onto the stage with Adam's arm around him, protecting him from whatever those people in the audience might say—and as if by magic he sees in that split-second psychological trick faces in the front rows, the people he knows will have their backs—Allison, both their moms and Adam's dad, the band, the dancers, Neil, a few of the TALC ladies, half a dozen of Adam's friends Tommy actually knows, a couple of his old bandmates, some of his friends from LA, Brad (who, Tommy thinks, will probably be more thrilled than can really be healthy to hear Adam's getting laid)—and as he realises how _many_ faces there are to fill those front rows he feels the smile relax, become more natural. "And tonight we're going to go back and you're going to find that guy the deejay wanted to set you up with so fucking bad . . . . Jason?"

"Josh. Tommy—"

"—you're going to find Josh and go out and have a couple of drinks and dance and have a good time." He lets the smile change just a little— _playful kitty_ , Adam might call it onstage. "Maybe make out with him a little if you think he's hot. And when you've got the bugs out of your skin—don't give me that look, I know what I'm talking about—you're going to come back to the hotel, and I'll be waiting. If you're tired we can sleep. And if you want to stay up awhile we can talk about how we're going to explain this to our parents, because they're going to be in Hawaii, right?"

"My mom is, yeah," Adam says. "But—"

"No," Tommy tells him, and puts not one but three fingers on Adam's lips. "No but. I trust you, okay? Go have fun, for real." He smiles, trying to keep it small enough to not look mocking and big enough for Adam to know it's genuine.

"I don't believe in cheating."

"I don't either. Dancing isn't cheating. Dragging him into the bathroom to fuck him would be cheating. I'm not telling you to go because I have some fucked-up idea about what you want, I'm telling you because you need to seriously chill and you're way more into the club scene than I am." And Tommy resists the urge to look around them, make _absolutely sure_ there are no paps hiding, before he goes up on his toes and kisses Adam hard on the mouth. "So let's go, because you're gonna look like a totally insensitive jerk if you stand the guy up, and I can't date an insensitive jerk."

Adam laughs. And when he comes back to the hotel around three in the morning and spoons up behind Tommy and kisses his neck and breathes gratitude into his ear, Tommy finds his hand—he left the light on for Adam, but opening his eyes right now feels like too much effort to be worth waking up for—and drags it up to his heart. 

"Hawaii, okay?" he mumbles, and it's probably a good thing Adam's fluent in drunkish because it's the closest thing there is to mostly-asleep-speech and _fuck_ you very much, consciousness, Tommy has no interest in leaving his nice and cosy dream nest. He feels Adam caress his collarbone, and then the lean when he finds the lamp to shut off.

"Okay," he murmurs into Tommy's ear. And then: "I love you."

Tommy smiles in his sleep.

And squeezes Adam's hand.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality  
> I believe that trust is more important than monogamy  
> I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul  
> I believe that family is worth more than money or gold  
> I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair  
> I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires
> 
> \--"[Affirmation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vhgxKxcuKI)," Savage Garden

Tommy's never heard Neil jam before.

He didn't even know it _was_ Neil until he came back onstage to rescue his water bottle; he just heard someone playing some kind of UB40 medley and assumed Cam was blowing off some steam after the show. Now he's sitting out in the audience past where the stage maintenance lights will let Neil see, listening to a mix of Michael Jackson and Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins and Justin Timberlake and the Rolling Stones, enjoying the way each one blends into the next, just watching Neil have some fun.

He stops in the middle of a highly creative remix of what might have started as "Sympathy for the Devil" and picks up something else Tommy doesn't recognise, calling something across the stage that doesn't carry clearly back as far as Tommy's sitting, and then Adam comes out with his face scrubbed clean and his bag slung over his shoulder, grabbing his own water bottle, cocking his head, listening, and then he picks up the lyrics in the middle, on-key and on-tempo only with the help of the keyboard behind him, not trying to project or put on a show—just, Tommy thinks, jamming, not really concerned with being pitch-perfect or even particularly loud, projecting his voice only out of habit. Chilling with his kid brother.

"More than just a toy in a patched blue suit, hold me in your arms, I'm just a boy like you . . . Damn it, Neil!" he breaks off, and Neil starts laughing behind the keyboard and says something else Tommy doesn't catch. "You can't just switch in the middle like that and expect me to keep up. Come on."

Tommy feels someone sit down next to him and looks over to see Leila looking up at the stage. Tommy feels instantly guilty—yes, they're going to be together in LA, but shouldn't they be spending time with their parents tonight?—and then he sees the smile on her face and his guilt quiets.

"It's been a long time since I've heard them play together," she says, putting a finger to her lips when Tommy opens his mouth to answer. He almost speaks anyway—it's not like it's easy to drown Adam out with a whisper—and then he hears why: Neil's voice is pretty good, but he doesn't have almost twenty years of training into it, and he definitely needs the mic Adam leans over to switch on during one of the substantial gaps where Adam apparently doesn't know the lyrics. Tommy sees Adam take a breath and then they're both singing, Adam stopping occasionally to listen and pick up the lyrics again, and then as they get through the first chorus Tommy recognises it: he doesn't know the name, but he remembers the local deejay playing the _fuck_ out of it in his senior year of high school.

"I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye . . ." Adam trails off, and Neil picks up with the next line, a line so ingrained in Tommy's memories of Katherine Miller and sixth-period art he finds himself mouthing along without any conscious idea of what the lyrics actually are.

"Come on, Adam, I know you know this, you had it on eternal repeat for two fucking days when it came out. I thought I was going to go batshit." 

Adam shrug and makes a hilariously clueless face. Tommy hears Leila chuckling and laughs with her. 

"Hell if I know, all the lyrics to this song sound the same."

"No _shit_ , Sherlock!"

Tommy snickers into his water bottle while Neil hammers a chord and picks up . . . yeah, that's Phantom of the Opera, Tommy's pretty sure anybody who's ever learned keyboards knows at least part of that one, but Neil has to be mixing up the melody line somewhere because _fuck_ , if it'd sounded that cool when Tommy saw the movie he might have stayed awake through the whole thing.

"How are you, Tommy?" Leila asks, while Adam sits and watches Neil jack around with the overture. Tommy shrugs.

"Pretty good. Glad it's time for vacation."

"Do you and Adam have any plans?"

Tommy shrugs. "I don't know about him, but I'm catching up on sleep. And Halloween, that's about it."

"I thought he might want to take you out while you were in Los Angeles."

"Take—" Tommy glances up at the stage, where Neil's finished his rendering of Andrew Lloyd Webber and moved on to Ziggy Stardust. So much for keeping it between the crew.

"Neil didn't tell me," Leila says, and Tommy jumps. "He didn't have to." She puts a hand on Tommy's shoulder, and he can't help looking at her. "I don't watch every video of every show, but Adam was so happy with the way the Auckland show turned out I think we'd be watching it tonight if I hadn't hunted down some links." She smiles at him. "Phone video is clear enough to see the way you two looked at each other."

"I haven't told my mom yet," Tommy spits out. It's something to say. Leila shakes her head. She's still got that knowing little smile on.

"After tonight, I don't think you'll have to," she tells him. "You should be more careful tripping over nothing like that."

Tommy can feel himself blushing as he rubs the back of his neck and tries to come up with an appropriate response—did he seriously? It was that obvious?—and then Neil moves on from Ziggy to something that's trying to click in Tommy's brain and not quite doing it until Adam starts singing.

"There's such a sad love deep in your eyes, a kind of pale jewel, open and closed within your eyes . . . you probably don't remember when we saw this in the theatre, do you?" Adam breaks off to ask, and Neil goes over to playing the backing track line as he shakes his head. "Doesn't surprise me, you were still a baby. I got my own chair because Mom needed her lap for you."

"Did you wish the goblins would take me away?" Neil asks. Without an audience to fill up the space, the mic makes his voice echo, and it's impossible to tell if he's being sarcastic or genuinely serious. Adam shakes his head.

"Nah. I tried to wish myself away when I was like eleven, though. Someone decided to rearrange my face at school for getting into Mom's nail polish." He grins, and it's the sheepish, oh-whoops-look-what-I-did that always cracks Tommy up. "When 19 said I was doing a tour I went over to Danielle's and asked the Jareth on her poster what took him so long."

Neil snorts into the mic, finally giving up on the backing track. "What did he say?" And yeah, he's being sarcastic, because it's just that _Adam_.

"Are you kidding me? It took fifteen years the first time," Adam says—sounding so perfectly serious Tommy can't be sure he's joking—and Tommy sees him looking over the stage for missed water bottles and anything else that shouldn't be there. "I can wait. Come on, Mom's probably back by now."

"Mom got back ten minutes ago," Leila calls, and Tommy bites the inside of his lip to keep from laughing aloud when Neil jumps. "Mom's been busy talking to your boyfriend."

Adam blushes visibly under the lights and hops off the front of the stage. "You should've said something, we could've—"

Leila stretches and kisses him on the cheek, cutting him off even more effectively, Tommy thinks, than a hand over his mouth. "You looked like you were having fun, I didn't want to interrupt you." She smiles, and Tommy has just a moment to think he can totally see where Adam's smile came from before she speaks again. "Going to escort an old lady to her room?"

Adam makes a face. "It's not even eleven," he protests. "We should go to the beach or something."

"In the middle of the night?" Tommy can't help asking. He's not a big fan of overly-restrictive rules, but this is the fucking _ocean_ , and he's not sure Adam's a particularly strong swimmer.

"Nobody ever said you can't beachwalk in the dark," Adam says. "And less paps there than downtown. Come on, let's get out of here. We can pick up your mom and go get something to drink."

They go. They get something to drink. And at some point during the night Tommy tells his mother what he's needed to say since Tokyo, not surprised but still relieved when she sighs in mock distress and asks him if she didn't raise him better than to date his boss before hugging him and asking the same question Leila did about their plans for LA.

The important people know, Tommy thinks, as he and Adam curl up together to sleep beneath only a light coverlet with all the windows open, not too stupid to appreciate the opportunity to listen to the surf and what could be a summer breeze before they get dumped into snow-and-ice Scandinavian winter.

They know. And it feels good.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know you anymore  
> I don't recognise this place  
> The picture frames have changed  
> And so has your name  
> We don't talk much anymore  
> We keep running from the pain  
> But what I wouldn't give to see your face again
> 
> \--"[I Don't Know You Anymore](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawc6quaSSE)," Savage Garden

Tommy isn't really paying attention. After all, they're just talking.

Standing very, very close to each other, and talking.

Something about it pings him, yeah, because it's Brad who's so very in Adam's personal space, but at the same time, it's _Adam's_ personal space, which means it's next door to non-existent, and getting worked up about it is like being upset because puppies bark.

Tommy's still kind of glancing over every once in awhile, though, and that's how he sees when Brad throws his arms around Adam's neck and leans against him and kisses him.

On the mouth.

Tommy doesn't wait to see if Adam kisses back. He just grabs his beer and heads for the patio, feeling like he might not need another few beers to be worshipping the porcelain god tonight.

Just friends now, Tommy remembers Adam telling him sometime during rehearsal for the AMAs. He said he wasn't ready for what I wanted and it fell apart.

Yeah. Just friends, kissing in the dining room of some friend of Adam's Tommy hasn't actually met yet. And Adam doesn't kiss without some kind of connection, because to him it's always real.

Tommy presses the heel of his hand against his eyes to soak up the liquid there before he can streak his makeup and leave his Australasian tan showing through the white. Fuck you very much _Adam_ , he thinks, staring out at his first residential street in months, wanting Adam to come after him, wanting Adam to stay the fuck away.

"—you get yourself in trouble, Brad, I'm serious. Water. And I think you should sit down."

"You know what I think?" Tommy feels his fingers tighten on the rail, and he's suddenly very glad for the plants on this patio. Adam would kill him if Brad went home missing teeth. "I think you need to go have a beer and find him and tell him, you know, that you're into just dating one person at a time, more people should do that, it'd save a lot of negativity . . . " And just like that Brad's off on some rambling side-track about monogamy and DOMA, something Tommy thinks Neil would have an easier time following than Adam even if Brad wasn't totally toasted. Finally he finishes up with "And that's why you should ask him now," and apparently Tommy's drunkish needs work, because he's completely lost.

"I'm not asking him to marry me when we've been dating for eight weeks and my dad doesn't even know yet!" Adam hisses, and Tommy wonders if somebody else is on the patio now. "Jesus, Brad, he's still trying to figure out what he even wants to call himself—"

"I think Tommy Joe sounds fine, and it's not eight weeks, it's eleven months, don't look at me that way, I saw that music video," Brad rambles off. "And that's not what I was going to say but that's a really good idea because you don't have to go to Canada anymore. We are so getting there."

"I—no," Adam says. "Drink your water. I'm not—"

"God, you're so bossy," Brad interrupts, and then there's a pause and a sipping sound, so apparently he doesn't mind Adam being bossy. "I didn't say you should _marry_ him, I said—" and Tommy can practically hear him fighting to gain back the enunciation the alcohol stole—"you should _make out_ with him. And get really inconvenient pictures you'll forget all about until they turn up on Oprah so people can talk about you converting a straight boy. It's like some kind of tradition. Maybe not tonight, though, he's covered in corn syrup."

 _It's food colouring,_ Tommy thinks, _it's food colouring and Adam did it for me in your kitchen, you—_

"Look, stop trying to dictate my own relationship back to me, would you?" And Adam's not pissed, not yet—his fuse is fairly long and gets longer instead of shorter, Tommy thinks, when he's dealing with drunk people—but irritated, yeah, irritated and a little hurt. "You had two chances at having a say and you turned them both down, so just—knock it off. Okay?"

"I'm sorry," Brad says, and from the slur in the words Tommy can tell he'll be repeating it soon. "Don't get mad at me, I just wanna see this one work out, you know? You were so cute when you called me when you met him the first time, I wanna see that work. I'm sorry."

"I want to see it work too," Adam answers, and when Tommy glances to his right he can see Adam on the other end of the patio leaning against the railing. "And I want you to stop trying to help for the night, okay? If you think you've got good input to share, do it when you're sober."

"Okay," Brad agrees. "You should still get another beer."

"Can't, Neil's not here and I saw your designated doing Jell-O shots about half an hour ago," Adam says. "Somebody has to get you home in one piece. I don't want to spend my vacation going to funerals."

"Okay," Brad agrees again, and Tommy slips back inside through the other side of the sliding glass door. Maybe Adam doesn't want another beer, but Tommy's has been empty for way too long.

It's half an hour before Adam catches up with him, and after they take pictures Adam pulls him aside. Tommy knows how this is going to go: Adam is going to tell him Brad needs a ride, and in an hour or two Adam will come back and he won't say a word about anything that might or might not have happened and Tommy will spend the rest of the night going quietly crazy because yeah, okay, maybe Adam's not the only one with issues he—

"—with me?"

"Huh?" Tommy suddenly realises he's been watching Adam talk and not hearing a word. The corner of Adam's mouth twitches a little.

"I said Brad and his designated driver both need a ride home and I don't want to deal with a car full of really noisy drunk people on my own, do you want to come?"

"Okay."

In the end there are six of them: Adam driving, Tommy in the passenger seat acting as impulse control for anyone who might get the bright idea to start a Chinese fire drill or grab at the steering wheel, and in the back Brad, Brad's erstwhile designated driver Stephanie, and a couple Tommy doesn't know, Alex and Jessica, who Adam seems to know from Wicked. Brad and Jessica both make genuinely hilarious noises when they get in the back.

"Oh my _god_ ," Brad says, and as Adam adjusts the rearview mirror to get around the heads in the backseat Tommy gets a view of him sinking back into the leather. "This is fucking amazing."

Adam grins into the mirror. "Yeah, it beats the Aries, doesn't it?"

"With a fucking _stick_ ," Brad agrees, and snuggles into Stephanie's side. Tommy glances at Adam.

"Aries?"

"Not the car I was driving when I got this one, the car before that," Adam tells him as they pull out. "It was a 1989 Dodge that belonged to my dad before I got it and you had to have a coat hanger to hold the trunk closed. When Dad gave it to me there was a nut driver in the glove compartment to open the driver's-side window and the turn signals only worked if you tapped the brakes first. It was Neil's car in high school after custody got worked out so Mom didn't have to drive him to Dad's every other weekend. I _hated_ that fucking car. When I finally traded it in I didn't even take the blanket off the backseat because I couldn't remember too well what it looked like when I put it down and I didn't _want_ to remember." Brad snickers. Tommy decides he doesn't want to ask why Adam would be afraid of whatever was under the blanket. Adam flicks the turn signal.

"Hey, Jess, you still live in the same complex, right?"

"Yeah, we just moved buildings," Jessica's voice floats up from the backseat. "Can we do this again before you go to Europe? It's huge back here."

Adam laughs. "Hey, Jess. How many gay men can fuck in the back of Adam Lambert's Mustang?"

"None, you'd kill anybody who spilled lube on the seat," Alex chimes in, and Tommy chokes on his mouthful of water, his own laughter rapidly turning into a coughing fit. "This car's probably seen less action than the Virgin Mary."

"Did you ever see my old backseat, Alex?" Adam asks, and the entire backseat of the Mustang—pristine, Adam takes care of his stuff, Tommy thinks—explodes into giggles as he pulls into an apartment complex. Adam offloads Alex and Jess and makes some kind of gesture at Brad and Stephanie.

"Seatbelts, guys."

Stephanie gets into her own belt, then reaches over to help Brad. "How much did you _drink_ , sweetie?"

"I think he was mixing beer and champagne," Adam tells her, and Tommy winces. "I'm kind of surprised he's not passed out yet."

"I've seen you do it," Brad defends, in the self-righteous tone only the truly drunk can manage. Adam doesn't even bother getting defensive.

"Twice," he agrees. "Once because I didn't know what the fuck it would do and once because I wanted drunk fast and didn't care if I had a hangover. Just for the record, that's _really_ not the best way to deal with your personal problems. Steph, you're off here?"

"Mm-hmm." She leans between the seats and nearly falls into Tommy's lap trying to kiss Adam's cheek. "Thanks, baby."

"Anytime. Flick your lights when you're in," Adam says, and he sits until her porch light turns on and off twice. 

By the time they get to Brad's, the backseat is quiet, Brad leaning against the side of the car. The front seat is quiet, too; making conversation isn't one of Tommy's strong points, and Adam's focused on the road. Finally, though, he pulls into Brad's driveway and kills the engine.

"Brad? Hey. Brad, we're at your place."

There's no answer, and when Tommy finally unbuckles his seatbelt to turn and shake him the only response is a sleepy murmur nowhere near conscious. Tommy shakes his head.

"He's out."

Adam sighs and unbuckles, then slides out so he can reach into the back. "Can you help me with the door?"

"Where's his keys?"

"The spare's taped in the mailbox."

Tommy finds the spare key between a bill and an advertising circular and unlocks the door, holding the screen open and glancing down the walk, where Adam's trying to get Brad on his feet enough to get him in the door. Finally he gives up and slides his free arm under Brad's knees. 

"When you said 'out,' I thought you meant passed out, not out-out," Adam comments, as he slides inside and closes the door with a foot. There's a space of silence, and this time Tommy's pretty sure it's as awkward for Adam as it is for him. "We . . . probably shouldn't leave him in this stuff," Adam manages at last, trying to indicate the fake plant Brad's wrapped around himself. "It's dollar stuff, it'll fall apart."

Tommy considers saying he doesn't give a shit and doesn't. "I can get him out of his clothesif you can get something to put him in."

Adam nods and heads down the hall. Tommy reminds himself Brad's lived here for a couple of years, it makes total sense for Adam to know where his bedroom is, and if they were friends with benefits before Tommy came into the picture what the hell business of his is it, anyway?

The shirt Adam finds is tyedyed bright blue and green, faded only a little with what looks to Tommy like years of wear. It's not the kind of thing he'd expect to find in Brad's dresser. Then he sees the logo on the front as Adam pulls Brad's hands through short sleeves that swallow his arms all the way down past his elbows, and the scrawled signatures and list of tour dates on the back as Tommy pulls it down over Brad's shoulders and lets the hem fall in a thick pool on the mattress, and he understands. 

He doesn't see Adam's signature anywhere, but then, he wouldn't.

Between them they manage to get Brad close enough to the middle of the bed that he _shouldn't_ manage to fall off and break his neck in the middle of the night, anyway, and then Adam bites the side of his lip—not exactly a nervous nibble, more of a thoughtful one, Tommy thinks, and the idea that he can tell the difference both pleases and frightens him. 

"Should leave him some ibuprofen, he's not gonna be up to moving before noon," Adam says. Tommy nods and follows him out of the bedroom, then heads down the hall to get a glass of water to go with the pills because he had a glass here earlier, he knows where the water glasses are, but fuck if he knows where Brad keeps his Advil.

He comes back with the glass and finds Adam still going through the vanity stand drawers in the bathroom, brow furrowed down. "Man, what are you trying to find, every rubber he's ever bought?"

"Ibuprofen." Another of those slightly awkward pauses. "We used to keep it in the top drawer with his allergy stuff when we were living downtown." More pause. "It's not here." He closes the drawer and checks the next one down.

"Try the cabinet behind the mirror?"

"There isn't a—" And Tommy's ideas about them end then, when he touches the corner of the mirror and it springs back and Adam just falls silent before opening the mirror and there it is, right on the second shelf. A bottle of Advil, next to a pack of Claritin. 

Adam spills out three of the former and one of the latter and carries them back to the bedroom without a word, puts them on the nightstand. "Let's get out of here."

Tommy agrees.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now I walk around without a care  
> She's got me hooked  
> It just ain't fair, but I--  
> I'm love stoned and I could swear  
> That she knows, oh
> 
> \--"[LoveStoned](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5H_kO0klc)," Justin Timberlake

"You okay?"

"Huh?" Adam glances over, then back as the light changes. "Yeah. He just got a little . . . excited, I guess. When he figured out I was dating you. It was a little déjà vu."

"You didn't tell him?"

Adam laughs. It's a quiet sound, kind of reflective. "Didn't have to. Brad could put Miss Cleo out of business."

"Was that when he kissed you?"

"You saw that?" His voice isn't tense, exactly, but it's thinking about being tense. Tommy never knew a tone of voice like that existed until right now, in Adam's car, watching the LA lights gleaming off rain-wet pavement, streetlamp traffic light Jack in the Box sign, trashy gorgeous American light pollution on a dirty beautiful American street.

"Yeah. But then I heard you on the patio and I kind of figured . . . " He shrugs.

"Old habits die hard when you're drunk," Adam answers. "As soon as he did it he started apologising for it. You're still staying at your old place for now, right?"

"Fuck my old place," Tommy says, not even aware he's going to say it until it's out. "I want to stay with you."

He's glad for the smile that crosses Adam's face, gladder for the shy hand he puts over Tommy's on the seat. Tommy turns his hand over, laces their fingers together.

"It's been over for a long time, you know," Adam says, suddenly, in the silence of another stoplight. Neither of them turned on the radio when they got in, and there's only the steady purr of the Mustang's engine. "I asked him if he wanted to try again right before I started Idol and . . . " This time it's Adam who shrugs. "That was it. I'm sorry if it looked like something else tonight."

Tommy shakes his head and drags their joined hands into his lap. "Nah." And as he realises how easily he was able to let go, how fast he was to assume Adam would do the right thing, he actually feels himself blushing at his first reaction. "I trust you. I mean, I'm trying to. I don't _not_ trust you, it's . . . fuck." Words are so not his department.

"If I'd never loved, I never would have cried," Adam says, and Tommy knows that quote from somewhere, if he could place it. It's not how he would have said it at all, but yeah—that's it.

"Yeah."

Adam squeezes his hand as he pulls into hotel parking. "I get it."

They head for Adam's room in a silence far different than the awkward starts and pauses in the car and Brad's bathroom—the party is over, the adrenaline gone, and it's time to be quiet, that's all.

"Happy Halloween," Tommy says finally, as Adam unlocks the door, and Adam smiles again.

"Happy Halloween." He pulls Tommy into a close hug, arms draped loose around Tommy's waist, chin on Tommy's shoulder, and Tommy stretches to kiss him, pulling off that stupid top hat with one hand.

He's not quite sure how they get from there to the bed, but he definitely knows how they get the essentials, because he's the one who grabs them before finding the buttons on Adam's waistcoat and laying it open, reaching to push jacket, shirt, and vest off Adam's shoulders and being met with a shake of the head.

Well, if that's how it is.

Tommy doesn't have the luxury of staying mostly-dressed, but if Adam wants to pretend he's Dracula or Lestat or Edward Cullen, who-the-fuck-ever he's supposed to be this year, Tommy's not going to bitch. Not tonight.

He doesn't think Adam's expecting it, when Tommy goes for it; Tommy's always been big on foreplay first and sex _after_ , thanks, no big fan of the three-minute quickie, so when they're still both mostly dressed and Tommy just straddles Adam's waist and unzips the fly on his dress slacks, pushes fabric out of his way and slides the condom down with a single hand, works his way down and over with a gasp but no real pause between one motion and the next before he seats himself and plants his hands and starts to move—no, he's not pretty sure, he _knows_ Adam's shocked.

"Tommy?"

"Right here," Tommy answers, and he misses the heat and feel of Adam's skin but he kind of likes the way Adam's so very obviously _thrown_ with Tommy's hoodie still zipped and his weight thrown forward, hands on Adam's chest, trying to rock—because shit, it's this hard? There _has_ to be some kind of trick to this that he's not getting—and no skin bare that's easy for Adam to touch. 

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit . . . " Adam breathes out, and his eyes lock with Tommy's and for a minute Tommy stops moving, stops trying to rock his way into some kind of rhythm that makes sense and just stares back, and then Adam's eyes fall shut and he groans and as he opens them again Tommy goes back to trying to rock his weight and totally failing because the bed is way too soft for this shit.

Adam's hands come to rest on his hips, fingers sliding beneath Tommy's ass, and _now_ there's leverage as Adam lifts his hips and moves his fingers at the same time and Tommy isn't trying to move in ways even Adam can only manage for a minute or so at a time with a hard stage under him.

Adam stares up intently as Tommy rocks, back against Adam's hands and forward against his chest (and yeah, if they ever do it this way again he's totally making Adam give him that support _first_ ), and Tommy wonders if Adam's doing the same thing Tommy did they first time they did this in the light—learning, memorizing, marking every little change in his face while they're . . . 

_making love?_

And okay, it's kind of kinky and he totally didn't even intend for it to go here tonight, but yeah—making love, if he's going to be totally honest, that's what they're doing. They're not looking at each other like a pair of easy fucks, or even a pair of moderately-hard-to-get fucks. Hell, they're _looking_ at each other. And this is Adam fucking Lambert he's with, okay, if anybody's allowed to be sappy it's Adam's boyfriend, and Tommy guesses that's him.

He's still riding that train of thought when Adam moans and his head falls back against the pillows and his fingers tighten against Tommy's lower back and he comes, back arching up and spreading his hair like a brushstroke, baring his neck in a tantalizing stripe where it's not still covered by his cravat, fake fangs catching on his lip as his mouth falls open.

And it's fucking gorgeous, okay, that's all.

They're slowly pulling apart when Tommy licks his lips and feels his fangs, and that's when he realises, "shit, I never took off my makeup." Somehow he forgot he even had it on, probably because he was getting too much amusement value out of teasing Adam by leaving his top on. Adam had his fancy steampunk glasses on all night and didn't bother doing anything telltale with his eyes, and pale disappears to Tommy under incandescent bulbs. 

"I know." And _now_ Adam's wriggling out of the way too many layers he's got on, and no fucking wonder, Tommy thinks—his neck and chest are slick with sweat. "That was the hottest fucking thing since . . . I don't even know. That was _hot_."

"Freak," Tommy answers, but it's not meant to be cruel, and he thinks Adam can tell. "What was that you were saying in those interviews? Vanilla, right?"

Adam laughs, and it's not his normal laugh, but it's not normal in a _good_ way, kind of dazed and deep and not really back from orgasm yet. "Hey, I've gotta have _some_ secrets."

"Should do it again sometime if that's how you're gonna be," Tommy says. "Bet those fake blood-capsule things they sell are all gonna be half-price tomorrow. 's gotta be better than fucking food colouring."

Adam groans something too mostly-incoherent to have come out of someone who has sex dressed as a vampire on a regular basis, and Tommy knows his answering smile has to be totally wicked, doubly so because he still needs to ask Adam how to take these fucking fangs out. "What, you've never done that before? Come on, get serious."

"I'm serious," Adam says. "Asked Brad once. He said no because he's got this thing about blood." He sits up and leans forward and licks the red on Tommy's chin, a single long stroke all the way up his jawline, and Tommy shivers when he feels the scrape of oversized prosthetic fangs where Adam has no good way to get them out of his way. "Don't start something you're not going to finish, all right? That's all I'm asking. All the way or not at all."

"I'm not starting _anything_ tonight, man," Tommy tells him. "I don't even know where the fuck that came from, I'm exhausted." He feels Adam pull the zip on his hoodie and worms out of it to cuddle against Adam's chest, relishing the skin against bare skin. "But hey, we can totally take a trip to Walmart tomorrow and see what's left on the half-off shelves. We've got, what, like three more days off?"

"I don't even know. I'm waiting for Neil to call me and remind me I need to get my ass on a plane. I'm not thinking tour at all this week." 

"Good," Tommy agrees. It's not just the sex—Tommy likes that there are plenty of breaks built into this part of the tour, because it makes it that much harder for Adam to burn himself out—but yeah, he kind of likes the idea that they've got time to touch, to kiss, to enjoy each other, and only then do they have to go back to the real world and planes and buses all the fuck over Europe.

And he likes the idea—definitely—that this time it's his turn to be Adam's first.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There he goes  
> My baby walks so slow  
> Sexual tic-tac-toe  
> Yeah I know we both know  
> It isn't time, no  
> But could you be mi-mine?
> 
> \--"[Fever](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOCXs6KNtlk)," Adam Lambert

Another gig, another Nokia.

And it feels right, Tommy thinks, as Neil takes his picture in the mirror while he brushes the last of his eyeshadow into place. Appropriate.

It all started at the Nokia. And now here they are again, at the end of the tour, the beginning of a promise he made a few weeks and a total lifetime ago.

"Okay, Mr. Fancy-Pants Camera Man, hand over the camera," Sasha demands, and Tommy laughs as he finishes his lipstick and Sasha and Neil vie for photographic domination.

"If any of this ends up on Twitter, Sasha, I swear to god—"

"Converting _again_?" Sasha asks, and as she gets the camera away Tommy raises his phone and snaps a picture.

"It will, I promise," Tommy says, and before Neil can take his phone and kill it dead Adam wanders in.

"Hey guys, can I have a minute?"

They gather, all of them, in the greenroom, and Adam asks them to stand in a circle. Then he crosses his arms, left over right, and holds out his hands to Mike the sound guy on his left and Monte on his right. Across the circle Neil crosses his arms the same way, and the rest of the group, from tech crew to performers, follow their suit until they're all linked, holding hands in a giant chain. Adam looks around, then down, then up again.

"This last six months have been the most amazing in my entire life," he says at last. "And none of it would have been possible without all of you being here and I'm pretty sure I have the best crew in the world, because you guys are incredible, and I'm so lucky I have all of you."

"Oh, no no no no, uh-uh, sugarboy," Sasha interrupts. "We're the lucky ones, babydoll. We got you."

Adam doesn't quite blush when Taylor and Cam and Isaac chime in, but Tommy can see him wanting to; a year into it all and he's still not ready for the compliments, Tommy thinks, and he wants suddenly to pull Adam into his arms and find for himself Adam's incredible gift with words so he can explain exactly why Sasha's right, they _are_ the lucky ones, in terms Adam can't argue with. Finally Adam bows his head a little, and they all quiet at once.

"I hope we're all here for the next tour, unless _some_ of us—" and he shoots a playful glance in Monte's direction, in Cam's—"get super-awesome record deals and end up doing other tours or invitations to dance for Gaga or something, but even if you're not here because you're doing something else, I want all you guys to know you can call me anytime for anything, if you need help or you just want to hang or . . . you know, whatever," he says; for once, even Adam is fumbling a little for words. "We're family. And we're gonna go out there tonight and we're gonna show them what that really means, right?"

Tommy smiles at him across the circle and joins in the general chorus of affirmatives. He feels Brooke squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. It's going to be fucking amazing to sleep in a normal bed in a normal flat and not have to check his phone to figure out what timezone he's in every single day.

And he's going to miss the hotel beds and tour buses and jetlag so fucking much he can hardly believe it.

"There was this saying in the theatre group Neil and I were in when we were kids," Adam finishes up. "It's kind of what I've been going for all this time. 'Give them love . . . '"

"'They'll give it back,'" Neil echoes from across the circle. "So let's blow the roof off this place."

"Don't forget the afterparties that're out there, I thought if we wanted to live on the edge tonight we could totally crash a couple of them," Adam says. "I've been saving them from Twitter and not saying anything. I can't really be sure, but, you know, I don't _think_ too many people would mind if we just showed up."

Most of them laugh. Then they let go of each others' hands and there's a crush Tommy gets stuck in the middle of as everyone hugs and kisses and he's pretty sure a couple of them cry a little, too. Then he gets out of the press and finds Adam slipping quietly back to his dressing room.

"You okay?"

Adam nods. "It's just . . . crazy, that's all," he answers. "Crazy and kind of scary. Tomorrow I'm going to be waking up in a fucking _house_. And then I get to marinate for a couple of weeks and start writing."

"You go along in a horse and cart for a bunch of years and then you get picked up by a bullet train," Tommy comments, and Adam nods.

"And then the train pulls through a station just slow enough to remind you that you can't get off. Yeah. I thought I was prepared for it, but I'm getting the feeling you _can't_ prepare yourself for it. You just have to grab on and hope you've got a good grip." He looks over at Tommy and smiles. "I'm glad you're here," he says, and the perfect naked honesty of it is enough to make Tommy want to look away. "I love you."

Tommy looks down at his nail polish. It's chipped, and he should really fill it in before the show, not that it'll matter if he doesn't play with a pick. Then he looks back up, and smiles. "I love you too."

The kiss is quiet, and soft, and at least a little bit of comfort-taking on Adam's part, Tommy thinks. Then Adam's smiling at him again, and as Neil raps on the door and calls "Five minutes!" before moving on, Adam leans down and nestles in Tommy's hair.

"Thank you," he says, and Tommy can't really look up, so his "for what?" is kind of directed straight at Adam's neck, but it's clear enough to be heard.

"For giving me a chance," Adam tells him. Then he lets go and reaches for Tommy's hand. "One more time?"

And yeah, one more time. And forever. This is one gig Tommy's ready to stay with as long as Adam wants him.

"Just for this time around."

And they walk into the wings, and then through them.

 _A change is gonna come_ , Adam sang once. He's already confided to Tommy he's going to sing it again tonight—send the tour out with a serious bang. 

As he plays his way through the costume change, Tommy's pretty sure the change isn't going to come; it's already here. He can feel it, cliché though it sounds, in his bones. It strums into him from every vibration of the bass strings, flows his way from every fluid motion of the dancers, and yeah, maybe Adam _is_ onto something with his talk about chi and sharing energy and everything that goes with that, because Tommy can feel the changes in the air as the things and people around him move. It's like someone's turned the air into some kind of breathable, tasteless ether that he can feel moving and rippling against his bare hands and his arms through the cloth of his shirt.

And Adam's back, kneeling on the stage singing Ring of Fire with his head thrown back and one leg beneath him just so, and Tommy thinks of Philadelphia, the last time they were together before tonight between Tommy moving and Adam being all over the fucking place for interviews, and he tilts his head down before anybody can see the shit-eating grin on his face. And _yeah_ : tonight's going to be _fun_. He can tell. It's the best kind of night—the crowd so into it they're screaming even when Adam's gone, Adam flushed under his makeup and totally riding the wave the crowd's throwing to him, practically bouncing on his mark when the lights go dark and Fever starts.

Tommy's pretty sure most of life's most important decisions, in the end, come down to knee-jerk reactions; even the bride and groom at the altar say "I do" in less than a second, no matter how many months they've prepared or how long it's been since the invitations got engraved. But Tommy's wasted his gift of months, and now he has about twenty seconds—thirty, if they do a long intro—to decide.

"There he goes, my baby walks so slow," he hears, and yeah, this is the part where he doesn't need to play, the part where all he has to do is go limp and let Adam call the shots.

But what it really comes down to, Tommy thinks, is this: starting as they mean to go.

And he's said again and again that he won't be Adam's bitch.

He doesn't have Adam's clarity, or the same playful-raunchy tilt to his voice, and he's not the act they all came to see. They're called Glamberts, after all, not Tomboys.

But they'll live.

And so as Adam puts a finger to his lips, "we both know it isn't time," Tommy reaches up with the hand not holding the neck of the bass and tilts the mic before Adam can sing the line.

"Would you be mine?"

This is the other thing about really important choices, Tommy thinks, in a second about a week long: when it's a joint decision, time warps and stretches out like fresh taffy as soon as the choice is in the other person's hands.

He can hear the entire audience _screaming_ , Jesus, it's like somebody let in about an extra five thousand people out there, and they all seem to be on his side—and he was afraid of them knowing only a couple of months ago? Seriously?—but it occurs to him in that second that he and Adam didn't talk about this, and this could be a _very_ big mistake on his part.

And then Adam smiles, happy and lazy and big, and he pulls Tommy into his arms—leaving just enough room for Tommy to swing the bass on its strap before it gets stuck between them, because he's pretty sure Adam isn't going to want tuning pins sticking him in the hip.

When they finally dare to set foot on Twitter again (two days later, and with Isaac _howling_ laughter at Tommy for being the one who managed to explode the internet and take Twitter all but offline for the better part of twelve hours), the fans will still be flailing like a five-alarm fire and declaring it the best kiss of the entire tour, beating out all of Germany and Amsterdam combined.

Tommy will definitely be in agreement. But right now he's more concerned with Adam's tongue against his lips, his teeth, caressing the roof of his mouth, lips tilted just so and touching and coming away and touching again, while Monte stands off to the side—Tommy opens his eyes just long enough to see and flick him off behind Adam's back—playing the basic melody over with this knowing little smirk on his face.

They break apart before too long—they do have two-thirds of the show left to go, and Terrance and Taylor can't stand there forever—and Adam manages to get back into the lyrics without so much as a tremble in his voice, but Tommy knows he's not off the hook. 

He's going to answer for that later. And, he suspects, he's going to love every second of it.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'd give up forever to touch you  
> 'Cause I know that you feel me somehow  
> You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be  
> And I don't want to go home right now
> 
> \--"[Iris](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYOzL3cp5k)," The Goo Goo Dolls

They come through the front door laughing, and they're barely into Adam's new living room when they're leaning against a wall, sharing the lengthy kind of kiss they had to skip earlier. Even the second one Adam gave him, during band intros—"And this guy--I have no idea who he is," he'd said, the cheeky bastard—was far too short, even though the fans were totally willing to forgive them taking a few extra seconds to curl fingers into hair and wrap arms around waists before pulling apart.

But now—now they are two, phones shut off, door locked, and they have all the time in the world. 

At least until tomorrow morning, because sooner or later Adam's dad is going to call.

They finally break apart so Adam can find the light switch. It doesn't do anything when he flicks it, and when Tommy puts his hand on the little table beneath it he finds one of those push-lights that bathes the table in a dim white glow. Adam picks up the paper next to the light and turns on the pocket torch on his keychain.

"No power til tomorrow but should be on when you get up, Chinese in cooler on the counter, battery lantern under table, Kroger four blocks down turn right, see you when you're back with the living," he reads. "It's from Mom. Oh . . . " a pause. "She loves you too and you've got a couple of soda pops in the cooler with the food."

"We're way too predictable."

"I don't mind predictable if it means we're eating lukewarm candlelight Chinese at two in the morning after crashing a fan afterparty," Adam answers. "I am totally down with that kind of predictable."

"I thought that girl was gonna drop the beer she was handing you when she realised it was you."

Adam giggles. "I kind of did too. Come on, I'm starving."

They make their way through the Chinese—actually more than lukewarm, thanks to kitchen matches and a gas stove, thank somebody for small miracles—and if they're being stupid in love, Tommy failing at chopsticks period and Adam trying and failing to feed him sugar peas because he can either keep stuff in the chopsticks or turn them around but not both at once, there are totally way worse ways they could be stupid. And it's totally not their fault Adam still had a perfectly good bottle of wine in one of his kitchen cartons.

There's no hot water for showers, but Adam boils a pan on the stove and when they're stripped bare together in the master bath—after Adam's gone on for awhile about how totally fucking rad it is that he has _his own bathroom_ , who's the genius who invented that idea—with a little cold mixed into the boiling to bring it down to pleasantly warm, they find a pair of washcloths in the undersink storage—and holy shit, Tommy thinks, Leila must have enlisted every bored housewife she knows even if it is only the really essential stuff that's unpacked—and wash each other, not so much out of sentiment as because self-examination by half a dozen candles and a battery-powered camping lantern is really fucking hard (but yeah, Tommy's cool with doing it for sentiment, too; it's a serious kind of nice to be trusted that much with someone else's body, especially Adam's). Then Adam blows out half the candles, and takes two and hands Tommy one, and leads him back into the bedroom.

"I can't wait to see this when I can actually _see_ it," Adam comments, and Tommy totally gets why—most of the house is Adam's job, his chill-out project after months on the road, but he specifically asked his mom to do his room because he never got around to actually buying real shit in between the Idol tour and Glam Nation, and he'd spend a week freaking just over sheets if he had to start from the ground up. This is his housewarming gift from his parents, and the candlelight glinting on a deep blue-green wall suggests to Tommy the room is going to be as close to a perfect sanctuary as it gets for Adam. And suddenly he feels like Adam's put something very small and very fragile and valuable into his hands and asked him to take care of it—a little scared, yeah, but excited, and honoured that Adam trusts him this much, to be in this gem-coloured room with Adam's photos and clothes and the few odd gimcracky things he's picked up that actually matter to him, and suddenly even though Tommy's totally digging the idea of snuggling together between Adam's new bedcovers he can't wait for it to be daylight so he can hear the story behind each item, the rambling narrative about the individual pictures on the walls.

Adam's arms wind around him from behind, and that's when Tommy realises three candles have turned into eight, not really enough to light up the room but enough to see comfortably. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Tommy shrugs. "Just really glad I'm here."

Adam nuzzles his cheek, and then Tommy feels something soft drape over his eyes. "Feel up to it?"

"What, are you planning on being up early or something tomorrow?" Tommy asks, and Adam laughs, pulls the scarf closer around Tommy's eyes, ties it, runs his fingers under Tommy's shirt and over his belly.

"No, but I figured I should ask."

There's one of those free-hanging canopies over the bed—of course, Adam's the kind of person who even has to sleep dramatically—and Tommy feels Adam guide him past it, back onto the comforter, which smells, glory hallelujah, like fabric softener and something that might be lavender, not hotel.

They lie that way for awhile, kissing and touching slow and sweet, and then Adam's moving him again, helping him edge his way up to the pillows without going face-first onto the floor, and Tommy lies back and reaches down to find Adam, pull him up alongside.

"Don't forget to blow those things out before you fall asleep," Tommy advises, and then Adam licks along his breastbone and he gasps and Adam chuckles.

"I won't," he says, and pauses and then, "It's okay?"

Okay for Adam to see without being seen is what he means, Tommy thinks. Okay to be just them with nobody else, in the light, while Tommy is in the dark, where he can't do anything but trust. And he smiles, and finds Adam's hand and pulls it up to his heart, held there by both of his own.

"Yeah."

THE END


End file.
